RACE THROUGH THE EYES OF HUCK FINN

 Few will dispute the place of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn among the pillars of American literature (it is, in fact, sited more than any other contender as the Great American Novel), approaching it in secondary schools has proven something of a conundrum for at least fifty years.

Reconciling the conflict between understanding Twain’s intent; ridiculing the institution of slavery in the way he knew best, biting satire, and the raw language, however accurate, directing at Jim the runaway slave establishes conversations that, as educators, literary scholars and a nation we should and have been having, I wat to explore here racial identity through the eyes of Huck Finn and how that cements his bond with Jim.

Huckleberry Finn is, unquestionably, a product of his environment, a boy from the sleepy town of St. Petersburg where slavery is a way of life. He knew of Jim, the man who would become his companion up the Mississippi but saw him as little more than Miss Watson’s slave. He is race conscious; understanding the racial difference that sets Jim and himself apart and what ace means for both of them on a social and legal scale.

What Huck lacks, however, is the love of a parental figure. Little is known of his mother but his father is scorned by the townsfolk. When he is present in Huck’s life, and he usually has a self-serving reason, he is abusive and distant, but most often he is out of the boy’s life squandering his earnings and his reputation.

However brutal Huck’s treatment is at the hands of his father it can never be compared to Jim’s miserable existence and, yet, they both have a reason to escape from Missouri. Huck needs to escape the clutches of his father while Jim, having run away from Miss Watson, is off for the free state of Illinois.

From the outset, then, there is a bond tying the two fugitives. Huck, however, cannot see himself as an equal to Jim.

A curious thing happens early on their journey upriver, offering a revealing look at Huck’s (as a product of his time and place) conflicted sense of morality. As much as he needs Jim to steer the raft he feels that not turning him in is a betrayal to Miss Watson, the sister of the kindly Widow Douglas who took him in. As hard as it is to sympathize with Huck for even considering turning Jim in to authorities as a sense of moral duty it is important to observe that, while his  adolescence shell may prevent him from speaking emotively, his reluctance to do so becomes increasingly less about needing Jim for the journey but, rather, because the man he had been accustomed to seeing as property is beginning to humanize in front of his eyes throughout the course of the journey in which, not incidentally, the boy learns trough a variety of incidents the cruelty of the world. Indeed, when Huck is given an opportunity to turn Jim in to two bouty hunters he misleads them away from Jim.

An attachment between Huck and Jim was as inevitable as one among any two  traveling companions upon a perilous journey but the eventual bond between Huck and Jim runs deeper. Jim fills a parental void in his life that no adult, save Widow Douglas who is compassionate but hopelessly incompetent, has offered him. So obvious is Jim’s love for Huck that at one point the boy even pranks the man making him believe he drowned during a fog. Huck himself is surprised at Jim’s intense reaction.

The boy without a mother and a father he could do without has found a parent in a man he was raised to see as a commodity. In turn, Huck learns something about the void he is filling for Jim, a man remorseful about his mistreatment of his deaf daughter.

What broke racial barriers for Huckleberry Finn was in part a time proven method, getting to know a man and letting preconceived notions erode. But, and this was started by the initial common goal that set them off to the promised land of Cairo, Illinois,, Jim became what he always lacked, a parental figure offering unconditional love. The man that he could barely think of as a man became not only his savior but his relief. Whether he realized it or not, race stopped mattering, if only for the time, to Huck Finn.