“It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger- but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way”(98).

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, throughout the book Huck and Jim characters develop and enrich through the company of each other. At the beginning of the novel we see Jim as Miss Watsons’ slave, and Huck as an uneducated white boy that Miss Watson is trying to conform to be “sivilized”. Twain challenges the readers on the idea of Huck’s character, and whether through the novel we see his growth and companionship develop with Jim or if we see Huck as a people pleasure in his beliefs. Does Huck change the way he thinks about slavery depending on the group that he is in front of or is he growing in the direction to fight for one belief?

In this scene, Jim and Huck previously gotten into an argument concerning the fact that Huck is trying to challenge Jim’s stance on the dream and the fog. Jim sees it as Huck talking to him in a way that isn’t respectful; he is talking to him like a nigger. This scene shows Huck in either a role-play situation or Huck’s stance on slavery and how it hasn’t truly change from the beginning. In the role-play situation Huck is playing an individual that is stubborn, and wouldn’t take the word of a nigger. On the other hand Huck could be showing his true thoughts and beliefs on slavery and how he truly sees Jim as only a nigger that must be wrong about the dream because he is a nigger.

When Huck says, “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger.”(98), the first thought that comes to mind is that Huck is white and Jim is black. The way that Huck presents the idea that he has to take time to decide whether Jim deserves an apology or not. He isn’t deciding whether he gets an apology based on if he was wrong or right, it was whether as a nigger Jim deserves an apology. In the fifteen minutes that Huck took to decide to apologize or not, the reader wonders whether Huck is questioning his character and deciding on the right thing to do based on his beliefs. On the other hand could Huck just be swallowing is pride in order to make the rest of their way bearable.

In the second half of the passage Huck says, “I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way”(98). To the reader it brings out the more sentimental side of Huck and his relationship with Jim. He talks about his feelings toward Jim concerned that he hurt his feelings, and made him sad. This bring the genuine character of Huck out and readers start to think, wow this kid is truly growing up and becoming his own person who fights against the horrible idea and law of slavery. Is Twain using this fake illusion of Huck becoming a nice boy to show that you as a reader are going to fall for it and at the end you will be fooled in thinking the Huck would change his ways and fight against society. In the end will readers see that Twain is laughing at the readers, and is wondering how an individual that is young change his views on slavery when put into a society that would eat him alive if he revolted against the standard view of pro-slavery.

In conclusion, Twain plays with the minds of the reader on the idea if Huck's character through out the novel grows and learns or if he is just smarter then everyone and tricks people into thinking he has changed and grown into a better person. This could be represented as humorous to Twain to see the reader struggle whether to believe Huck and love him or take him as a fraud. Also challenging the idea that during this time period a little boy could stand up and take on a society, and be anti-slavery and save his best friend Jim. This passage challenges the idea of the ending of the adventure Huck is having with Jim, and the realistic ending of Jim being caught and sold, and possibly never reuniting with his family.

Quiz

“All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns—the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and sing out, ‘Kill them, kill them!’ It made me sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain’t agoing to tell all the happened—it would make me sick again if i was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night, to see things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them—lots of time I dream about them.” (Twain 127)   

Now this quote stood out to me for several reason in the passage. I have been looking throughout the novel the role nature and the river play throughout all the scenarios. Here “the boys jumped for the river” I seen that the view the river as an escape from death as a haven. Throughout the novel, the river has been the the embodiment of the perfect adventure, a runaway house, nights laying and enjoying the beautiful Mississippi. Even more the river is where Huck went to die, when he faked his death he used the river as an escape. Jim looking for freedom as a now runaway slave used the river as his access to freedom. Buck is now using the river as an escape from the men trying to kill them, using the river as the safespace it has been throughout the story. This time the river did not save Buck, and It seems Huck feels ‘sick’ because he witnessed the murders of a friend, but he could be feeling sick because the river is not the place to escape. I seems to be a new personality to the river showing that one can not escape the pursuant of the pains of society. The river can offer a temporary fix, but when society begins to push and hunt, the river gives. I then feel Huck became ‘sick’ because the river has been tainted,  his child friend has been hunted down and murdered in a haunting fashion. It seems to signify the end of Huck’s adventure and into a deeper idea of running away. That Huck is now longer looking for the adventure but is now wanting an escape from the society where the hypocrisy of southern country and society held up. He still dreams about them, even after continues on his journey and begins write down what he experienced, he states that is still makes him sick. Again, It shows that his part of his story was a turning point for him and the story. Even after experiencing everything else he can not shake the images of whatever happened to Buck, because it traumatized him, his adventured ended and the river that was always protection was not use to save Buck.

Huck's Big Dilemma

After writing note to Miss. Watson:

“I felt so good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do I straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking – thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river… ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’ – and tore it up.” (Twain 227-228)

                Huck’s inner struggle over his situation with Jim rises to the surface beginning on page 226 and culminating on 228. He’s in a scenario now where he lost Jim and knows that he’s been captured by people bent on selling him further down the river. He believes that Jim would be better off if he was a slave back with Miss Watson if he had to be a slave anywhere, so he decides to write a letter to her directing her to Jim. He begins to think of their adventures together and reflects on all of the good times and positive characteristics Jim possesses, while failing to formulate any sort of list of negative situations with the man.

                This scene is crucial to Huck’s development. Earlier in Chapter 16, Huck is seconds away from paddling ashore to tell someone Jim is a runaway slave, only to have his mind changed when Jim conveniently calls him his best friend. “I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me.” The only reason he wanted to tell on him was because he still viewed Jim as Miss Watson’s property. “Conscience says to me, ‘What had poor Miss Watson done to you, that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you, that you could ever treat her so mean.” Even in this internal battle, the side of Huck that wants to write the letter, or bail on Jim, is only interested in doing so to make right his wrong towards Miss Watson of stealing her property. This occurrence along with a few others shows that Huck is down deep a do gooder. He’s not trying to rid himself of Jim because he’s a slave, he’s trying to return property. He’s also not trying to help Jim to spite Miss Watson, he’s trying to help his friend. It’s interesting though that he views the two as good and evil saying he’s going to hell for helping this slave escape. It seems like Huck is treating his old, ‘sivilized’ life as one that will lead him to heaven, while condemning the moral philosophies he has learned on his adventures as bad or worthy of going to hell.

                It would seem then Huck doesn’t put much faith in his perception of heaven. That back side quest has long been developing throughout these pages as well. He seems to hold what Miss Watson says very close to him, but isn’t afraid to challenge her teachings when the situation and his feelings tell him otherwise. I think this makes Huck an incredibly relatable character and because you know he wants to do the right thing, but has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, this scene where he debates with himself comes off incredibly powerful. Which way is he going to side? He seems to be running the path of a ‘damned’ soul, but he’s good deep down so maybe he’ll still come back to Jim even after he writes the note. And sure enough he did. This scene builds formidable suspense and depicts one of the, if not the, biggest moral dilemmas Huck will face.

                

Welcoming the Stranger

Mark Twain uses a reoccurring theme of incorporating strangers or outsiders into his stories to open up the eyes of both the characters and the readers to make them really contemplate their beliefs and practices.  Throughout the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck has a very difficult time determining what is right and what is wrong.  At the beginning of his story, Huck explains that the Widow Douglass and Miss Watson are trying to “sivilize” him by teaching him both educational and religious values; we see that these values are contradictory as both women are slave owners, but we do not know if Huck sees the inconsistency.  Later on in the story we see Huck’s internal struggle between turning Jim in (the right thing to do by law) and letting him stay (the morally higher thing to do).  Huck states, “Well then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?  I was stuck.  I couldn’t answer that.  So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother not more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.” (Twain 104).  Huck sort of shrugs off the notion of trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong, and this internal struggle seems to go back and forth without reaching a conclusion.  Huck ends up not telling on Jim, and their relationship develops into something of a twisted friendship where the both try and look out for each other but often with ulterior motives.   Then the two encounter the king and the duke, a pair of strangers who commit acts that cause Huck to question morality again, and we see him make some decisions that lead us to believe that maybe his ideas are maturing.

During their first fraud, the king and the duke bring in a large amount of money by scamming a town into coming to their “Royal Nonesuch” play.  Huck does not seem to question their motives, and seems impressed by the amount of money they were able to retrieve from the foolish townspeople.  However, in their next act, the king and the duke play a horrible trick on a town, specifically on a family that is mourning the death of a loved one.  Huck starts to feel bad that the king and the duke are stealing the inheritance of the man that had died.   He is so bothered by the acts that are occur in order to continue with the prank that he internalizes it and demonstrates it physically to the point where it makes him feel sick.  After thinking it over, Huck explains to the reader, “I felt so ornery and low down and mean, that I says to myself, My mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust.” (Twain 188).  This is the first point where Huck makes a conscious decision to fix something that was ‘wrong’ and make it ‘right’.  As a reader we can see that these two strangers came in and committed acts that caused Huck to question what is morally right and wrong, and Huck decides to go against what is lawfully right (not stealing) and do something that is on a higher level of morality: get the money away from the con artists and try and get it back into the hands of its rightful heirs.  This can be interpreted as Huck slowly starting to decide for himself what is considered right and wrong.

Despite this turning point however, it is difficult for the reader to be fully convinced that Huck realizes what is truly morally right and wrong, as he still cannot get past the idea of the differences between white and black.  Huck uses the phrase, “Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I’m a nigger.” (Twain 175).  In saying this Huck seems to make the notion that the likeliness of him seeing an act like that of the king and the duke again is equivalent to the likeliness that he would ever be a ‘nigger’: impossible.  Huck still does not seem to understand the harm in treating human beings as property, and does not recognize that slaves were just as human as white people were and there is a moral injustice in selling human beings as property.  So on one side of the spectrum we see the strangers helping Huck, in a backhanded way, to realize that there are acts that are morally wrong and that sometimes they need to be righted, but on the other side of the spectrum, as readers, we see that Huck still has a long way to go in developing his moral conscience.  The strangers serve as a wakeup call to both the characters in the story as well as to the reader to keep all eyes open and recognize that there is always something to question and that sometimes the answers are not found on the surface.

Works Cited:

 Twain, Mark.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Penguin Group Ltd., 2003. Print.

Pudd’nhead Wilson is a story centered around the issue of race and what it means to be defined as a specific race. In Raymond Williams’ article Racial, race is defined as “general classification as in ‘the human race’ (1580); a group of human beings in extension and projection from sense.” What I take out of that is that race is a classification or categorization tool we humans use on ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with classifying or categorizing someone, however there are foolish ways of extrapolating characteristics perceived in those classified groups to individuals. The true is same of the converse, characteristics from individuals generalized to groups. This story contains myriad examples of negative black and positive white stereotypes that seem to be backed by nothing more than a stigma rather than pragmatic action.  

Mark Twain does a great job poking holes in the nature side of the nature versus nurture conflict through his character Chambers, a true Wilson and Roxy’s pseudo son. Chambers has no slave blood in him compared to Tom (Roxy’s real son and current Wilson) who is 1/32 black. Chambers grew up a slave a turned, in turn, fit the stereotype of an uneducated, submissive black slave. Tom on the other hand grew up educated and wildly aggressive. Tom screams at Roxy, “A dollar! – give you a dollar! I’ve a notion to strangle you! Is that your errand here? Clear out! And be quick about it! (107)” The nurture argument in the parameters of the zeitgeist would cause Tom to act submissively and would classify him as ineducable, which he clearly wasn’t. When Tom learns of his true origins from Roxy his behavior changes and ‘reverts’ back to his subservient fate. Tom finds that his “habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished – his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a shake. It was the ‘nigger’ in him asserting its humility, and he blushed and was abashed. (118)” I think this is an exceptionally future sighted remark. This demonstrates that one, the stereotypes are wrong or are at least fickle and two, that race is nothing but a mental classification.

This novel also touches on the conflict of playing god and its morality. Roxy switches Tom and Chambers as kids effectively playing god, in an attempt to save her son from being ‘sold down the river’. In the end, her son ends up a pretty lousy human being and still gets sold down the river, while the real Tom took the abuse a life as a slave brings and upon regaining his status had no clue what to do with himself. Additionally, Roxy ended up with an abusive son who she called master almost her entire life. In the end, the two people involved in Roxy’s god playing hoax as well as Roxy herself fared poorly. Pudd’nhead Wilson on the other hand ended up fairly well off. Originally considered the town fool because of a joke too clever, Pudd’head was ostracized as an unusable lawyer and was generally considered the weird guy that experimented and did weird things on the edge of town where he lived. The mad scientist. Instead of trying to play god by changing who he was, Pudd’nhead continued his strange work collecting fingerprints and making the most quotable calendars imaginable. Then when the time was right he used his perceptive thinking skills and the fingerprints to fix his reputation, resulting in him becoming a lawyer like he always wanted. This is an interesting counter to playing god, instead taking the nurture route. The story of these four sheds light on the ability the environment has in shaping individuals.

The Fiction of Race

Throughout Mark Twain’s novel, Pudd’nhead Wilson, there are multiple ways race was defined by. As a class we referenced many identifiers of race: class, speech, skin tone, ancestry,  clothing, mannerism, etc. The one that interested me the most was blood, we kept referring to the One Drop Rule, which after a little research, I found out wasn't an actually law until the early 20th Century. Meaning that it was only an idea enforced that if part of ones ancestry was black then that was enough to force that one person into slavery. Although realistically the One Drop Rule, was enforced to stop interracial marriages.Now, this is the first instance where I see Twain bringing light to how stupid the one drop rule was to stop racial mixing. 

Fig. 1

The fear was that the weaker black would over power the pure white blood, but looking at figure 1 one can we tell what those two races are? When only exposed to the bear minimum of a humans essence, does race still exist?

With those two questions, it it possible to say that being a born "identity" is a fiction made by society? Twain uses Tom to express this, "'Why were niggers and whites made?' What crime did the  uncreated first nigger commit the curse of birth was decreed for him? And why is this awful difference between white and black?"(Twain 117). This passage asking questions far beyond the averages readers daily thinking. Even now, in the 'progressive' 21st Century these questions make any person feel awkward. Still why? What caused the inherit birth differences between the white and the black? Quite frankly its the institutional practices of the time that carried into the ideas of social darwinism. I think entirely that Pudd'nhead Wilson is Twain bringing the issue that race and the positive and negative connotations that come with them are all based on social beliefs.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark.  Pudd’nhead Wilson. New York: Penguin Group Ltd., 2004. Print.  

Nature vs. Nurture

In the novel, Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain constructs the theme of Nature vs. Nurture through the relationship between slaves and their owners, and also Roxy and “Tom” (Her biological son). Initially in the story we first see the relationship between the slave and owner, and what truly makes one inferior to the other. Identity is used as a tool to determine where an individual fits into society, and what skin color they are. Twain uses the symbol of blood, and fingerprints to determine an individual’s identity. Roxy’s identity is Negro because of the following description, “To all intents and purpose Roxy was as white as anybody, but one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her Negro”(Twain 64). During civil war time if there was any sign of “black” blood in your system you were considered inferior and part of the black community. This can also be seen in a satirical sense, Twain using how ridiculous it is that one individual can be thirty parts “white” blood and have one part be “black” blood, and the ratio is completely disregarded. The white society during this time wanted the reputation of “pureness” even though throughout their actions and roles during slavery that description word doesn’t fit. The identity factor serves under the idea of Nature, one is born into who they are, and can’t change or alter that identity.

Nurture on the other hand is shown through the relationship of Roxy and her biological son, that we refer to as “Tom”. In the beginning Roxy decides to try to save her son from slavery by switching her owners baby and her son. She does this with the possible consequence of being “sold down the river”, which to the slaves as this time was the most horrible thing that could happen to them. Roxy as a motherly instinct tries to save her son, but a question that is raised toward the end of the book is there a possibility that Roxy is an overbearing mother? Twain sets it up where I can be seen in a satirical sense where Roxy does something that risks her lively hood for her son, but her son grows up as a horrible person. If “Tom” had to experience being part of slavery as a slave would he be better off. Twain shows again exaggeration of being a slave and not being a slave. He shows that in order for one to be a good person and make right choices they need to be trained. This can be viewed as Twain making fun of our world then and today on how people need to be “trained” to be good people and can’t naturally make the right decision and be the right person.

Nurture is also shown at a level where it isn’t between individuals that are biologically related. The relationship that represents this is between Chambers (Roxy’s owners’ son) and Roxy. Here they aren’t related at all but throughout the story Roxy takes care of Chambers like he is her own child, and this represents the idea of Nurture on Roxy’s role. Later on in the story Chambers whom has been treated poorly compared to “Tom”, gives money and supports Roxy. “Tom” in favor to his mom saving him from slavery is suppose to support her and pay her back, and he loses all this money in gambling and refuses to take care of her. So here an interesting theme of Nurture between Roxy and Chambers represents the idea one would imagine when thinking about nurture between Mother and Son. Here Twain switches the expectations the reader might expect. Again can be seen in a satirical sense, showing not even her son wants to take care of her, the exaggeration shows how ridiculous society is when people that are biologically related don’t even take care of each other. If that doesn’t happen who can we expect to nurture us in return to nurturing them.  

Source:

Twain, Mark.  Pudd’nhead Wilson. New York: Penguin Group Ltd., 2004. Print.