Slavery In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn is a classic novel, bursting with countless plots, characters, hidden ideas, and one incredible friendship that outlast all of society 's critical ideas. Controversy swirls around Jim, one of the primary characters in the novel. He and Huck become the best of friends, defying convention as Jim is black, and Huck is white. Concealed inside this novel are Twain 's very own thoughts about societies during the 1800 's when he wrote Huckleberry Finn. In doing this, Twain hoped to show his readers how badly African Americans were being treated and some of the hardships they had to endure simply because of their color. Overall, Mark Twain used Huckleberry Finn as a literary vehicle to express his views on the hypocrisy of slavery
"Jim is no murderer; Jim is no rapist; Jim is not a thief. He is no gangsta, nor is he gullible and stupid. Jim is nobody 's fool. He endures, and he overcomes." (Chadwick - Joshua xiii) In the book, Twain portrayed Jim as a fine man who had many excellent qualities. Contrary to Jim, the free white men in Huckleberry Finn were purposely developed and presented to show that, just because Jim was a black slave, he could still be more honest and true than a white man. For example, the Duke and the King, two men Huck and Jim took on their raft, pretend to be Peter Wilk 's long lost brothers and claim that he left his England estate to them. Near the end of the book, the Duke and the King were tarred and feathered for their cons and extremely bad plays. This illustration of white men being awful, untruthful people gave Jim 's temperament a superior position over the white characters due to his ingenuous and genuine disposition. To the reader, it seems as if Jim was the only one not making foolish decisions based on wicked desires. In making this obvious point, Twain was proving his quote: "Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare." (Salwen