Huckleberry Finn - Critical Essay

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(The Green Hills of Africa [Scribner’s. 1953] 22). The controversy behind the novel has been and will always remain the crux of any readers is still truly racism. Twain surely does use the word ‘nigger’ often, both as a referral to the slave Jim and any African-American that Huck comes across and as the epitome of insult and inferiority. However, the reader must also not fail to recognize that this style of racism, this malicious treatment of African-Americans, this degrading attitude towards them is all stylized of the pre-Civil War tradition. Racism is only mentioned in the novel as an object of natural course and a precision to the actual views of the setting then. Huckleberry Finn still stands as a powerful portrayal of experience through the newfound eyes of an innocent boy. Huck only says and treats the African-American culture accordingly with the society that he was raised in. To say anything different would truly be out of place and setting of the era. Twain’s literary ...

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taught Huck to overcome certain stereotypes, such as black stupidity and apathy, but not quite thoroughly to rebel against societal prejudices. Huckleberry still believes Jim to be irrelevant and pig-headed at times, as in their exchange over the Biblical story of King Solomon and the French language. Huck does not tell Jim but to the reader," If he got a notion in his head once, there warn’t no getting it out again…I see it warn’t no use wasting words – you can’t learn a nigger to argue" (76-79).
Huckleberry is also a very important character to study to further contemplate Twain’s literary style in that Huck is the main character and the voice through which Twain conveys the ...

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