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[Abstract] At the end of the novel ,Jim, a Negro slave, has been made a free man by Miss Watson in her will. Though he is granted free at last, can he really get his freedom during the 1840s in America? This paper will discuss this question from social and historical aspects to illustrate whether he can get his freedom he is crazing for and how his fate will be.
[Key words] freedom enslavement fate
1. Background of the author’s composition of the novel.
Mark Twain’s greatest work, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884. During the years of the novel’s composition, Twain’s imagination was focused on his own boyhood and the world of the old Mississippi before the Civil War between the Northern and the Southern states. The whole setting and atmosphere of the novel drew on Twain’s own childhood and on his experience as a steamboat pilot in the four years from 1857-61. In the novel the Town St. Petersburg was modeled on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain was born and spent his boyhood. Events in the novel take place during the 1840s when Missouri was still a slave owning state. Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 the slave system was considered to be a natural and inevitable feature of social and economic life. This system allowed white men to own Negroes and to treat them as they would treat farm animals. Twain, as a young man witnessed slavery at first hand. His knowledge of Negro speech and customs was acquired during childhood and he used this in his portrayal of Jim. His four years’ work as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river made him have an intimate and detailed knowledge of that great river and of the communities that lived along its shores.
Slavery in the actual pre-Civil War South had come to seem to him only an extreme example of the constraints imposed by that society on all its members, white as well as black. And the historical South remembered with such unexampled vividness from Mark Twain’s boyhood, had tended to become a metaphor for the human condition. So as he grew older he became more and more disenchanted with the new United States.
2. Social conventions and people’s attitudes towards Negroes.
The setting of the novel is the Mississippi Valley and towns on both sides of it in around 1840s. The Pre-Civil War South was a slave-owning state. It permitted the continuation of a system which reduced some men, women and children to the status of farm animals and machinery. Jim is a slave of Miss Watson. He runs off because he overheard Miss Watson’s planning to sell him down South for eight hundred dollars and he accidentally meets Huck, who escapes from his cruel father, on Jackson Island. The two fugitives begin their long journey to seek their freedom. Jim, a black slave, lives in the lowest status of society. He has no rights of the ordinary man. Everyone who finds that he is a run-away slave will turn him in to his owner. The Negroes’ social position is described in the novel clearly. Old Finn, Huck’s father, is a cruel drunk. Though he lives in the lowest status of the white society and always in need of money, he is very proud of being a white man and despises Negroes. This can be illustrated from his words: “It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote, myself, if I wasn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote again.” 1The two confidence tricksters, the king and the duke are ruthless rogues. They will lose no chance to deceive the people they meet. When they do not succeed in their tricks, they first think of selling Jim to get the reward. So Jim is the easy target for people to aim at. He is an unlucky lamb who is controlled by others according to their will.
Even Jim’s companion and friend Huck doesn’t treat Jim as an equal human being as the white man. Though they both seek freedom, but freedom certainly has a different meaning for Huck than it does for Jim. Huck’s narration of freedom, leisure and good companionship on the raft conflicts with Jim’s slave narration. For the latter contains a version of freedom which means clear himself from the chains and fetters of slavery. When Cairo approaches, Jim gets very excited and he describes his bright future. He can work hard to buy his wife and children out of the slavery, so they will all be free and live together happily. Jim’s words make Huck get very uneasy. He immediately slips black into the language of the dominant culture and takes over the hegemonic language as a way of gaining power over Jim. He said with racist slur: “give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.” 1If Jim will not go easily with Huck’s plot, he can simply be handed back to his former owners. In fact, Huck never divests himself completely of the attitudes towards Negro slaves instilled in him by his society. For example, Huck’s reaction to Jim’s homesickness shows that he has not yet begun to look upon his friend as a real human being. In chapter 31, Jim is sold as a runaway slave for forty dollars by the two confidence men. Huck has a prolonged tussle with his conscience when he learns this. At last, he resolves to help Jim escape. He says to himself, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” 1(p.180) Here, his moral dilemma is brought about by a corrupt society that has institutionalized slavery. Also in Chapter 32, Aunt Sally asks Huck if anyone was hurt when the explosion occurred on the steamboat. Huck promptly replies, “No’m. Killed a nigger,” to which the old lady adds, “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.” 1(p.185) This little exchange clearly outlines the position of slaves like Jim in the South at that time.
Worst of all Jim himself is also affected deeply by the dominant culture. When he runs off to Jackson Island, he tells Huck, “I owns myself, en I’s with eight hund’d dollars I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’t want no mo’.” 1Jim judges his own worth as property in the dehumanizing terms of economic exchange. In doing so, he shows how far the language and values of the white masters of this society have influenced his own way of thinking and speaking; he is unable to break fully free form his slave self. Jim’s brief speaking part in the last chapter focuses on his new financial status, the forty dollars Tom has given him that pleased him most to death. There is no hint of resentment here at Tom’s exploitative behavior, the way he has been used as a puppet to the latter’s imaginative needs. Further more, Jim is an illiterate, primitive and superstitious man. He believes that the hidden forces governing the world manifest themselves in signs and omens. This is also a drawback for him to achieve his freedom.
3.Historical situations on black issue
Mark Twain gives his novel a happy ending and the fugitive slave Jim has got his freedom. This is a tradition of the mainstream literature in the 19th century. Jim might be legally free with the forty dollars in his pocket, but he is left alone, eleven hundred miles form home, and apparently has been forgotten by Huck. The limits of his freedom are apparent with any knowledge of the status of the free slave in the region at the time. Victor Doyno summaries:
“A manumitted black would certainly not enjoy genuine freedom in 1845… The likelihood of Jim earning enough money to purchase his wife and children is close to zero…[A]nyone could contest the freed status of a Black such as Jim by claiming that he was not in Missouri when Miss Watson died. In the 18435-1850 era, Jim could very easily be re-enslaved in Arkansas…If a free man stayed in Arkansas longer than 180 days, he could be imprisoned for a year.”
Here we can see a free nigger doesn’t mean he can enjoy his freedom forever. He can very easily be enslaved again. Further more, freedom was also a highly problematic term as it applied to black lives in the South after the War. The freedom granted by the Thirteenth Amendment signified, for African-Americans, the end of oppressive and dehumanizing white authority and a chance for new forms of self-development and autonomy and equal rights such hopes quickly evaporated, together with the first promises of reconstruction. As W.E.B. Dubois wrote: “the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then move back again toward slavery.”In the 1840’s in Southern Illinois, laws of the state directed county officials to arrest any Negro who could not show freedom papers signed by his former master. Jim seems to have been familiar with the status of Negroes in Illinois, for in calmer moments he and Huck had wisely planned to go for up the Ohio River by steamboat, perhaps as far as the state of Ohio, where they might have established contact with the underground Railway. With this sort of help they would have had a good chance to reach Canada, in the manner of Eliza and George Harris in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Only in Canada would Jim be immune from arrest and delivery back to his mistress. If he does so regardless his wife and children he may get his freedom, but his family reunification is out of the question.
4. Conclusion
To conclude, Jim’s long journey of pursuing his freedom never ends at the end of the novel when he is granted freedom by Miss Watson; it is the very beginning. If he wants to enjoy his “freedom”, he has to give up his wife and children and stay in a Free State or go abroad (actually it is very hard for him to get real freedom because of historical, political and social reasons we discussed above). If he decides to work hard and earn enough money to buy his family out of the slavery, he must risk the danger of re-enslavement.
References
[1]Nash Smith, Henny, eds., Adventures of Huckleberry Finn[M]. Cambridge:The Riverside Press, 1958.
[2]Doyno, Victor A., Writing Huck Finn: Mark Twain’s Creative process[M].Pennsylvania: University of Philadelphia Press, 1991, p230.
[3]Foner, Eric,Reconstruction: America’s unfinished revolution,1863-1877[M].New York: Harper and Kow, 1988, p.602.
[Key words] freedom enslavement fate
1. Background of the author’s composition of the novel.
Mark Twain’s greatest work, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884. During the years of the novel’s composition, Twain’s imagination was focused on his own boyhood and the world of the old Mississippi before the Civil War between the Northern and the Southern states. The whole setting and atmosphere of the novel drew on Twain’s own childhood and on his experience as a steamboat pilot in the four years from 1857-61. In the novel the Town St. Petersburg was modeled on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain was born and spent his boyhood. Events in the novel take place during the 1840s when Missouri was still a slave owning state. Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 the slave system was considered to be a natural and inevitable feature of social and economic life. This system allowed white men to own Negroes and to treat them as they would treat farm animals. Twain, as a young man witnessed slavery at first hand. His knowledge of Negro speech and customs was acquired during childhood and he used this in his portrayal of Jim. His four years’ work as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river made him have an intimate and detailed knowledge of that great river and of the communities that lived along its shores.
Slavery in the actual pre-Civil War South had come to seem to him only an extreme example of the constraints imposed by that society on all its members, white as well as black. And the historical South remembered with such unexampled vividness from Mark Twain’s boyhood, had tended to become a metaphor for the human condition. So as he grew older he became more and more disenchanted with the new United States.
2. Social conventions and people’s attitudes towards Negroes.
The setting of the novel is the Mississippi Valley and towns on both sides of it in around 1840s. The Pre-Civil War South was a slave-owning state. It permitted the continuation of a system which reduced some men, women and children to the status of farm animals and machinery. Jim is a slave of Miss Watson. He runs off because he overheard Miss Watson’s planning to sell him down South for eight hundred dollars and he accidentally meets Huck, who escapes from his cruel father, on Jackson Island. The two fugitives begin their long journey to seek their freedom. Jim, a black slave, lives in the lowest status of society. He has no rights of the ordinary man. Everyone who finds that he is a run-away slave will turn him in to his owner. The Negroes’ social position is described in the novel clearly. Old Finn, Huck’s father, is a cruel drunk. Though he lives in the lowest status of the white society and always in need of money, he is very proud of being a white man and despises Negroes. This can be illustrated from his words: “It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote, myself, if I wasn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote again.” 1The two confidence tricksters, the king and the duke are ruthless rogues. They will lose no chance to deceive the people they meet. When they do not succeed in their tricks, they first think of selling Jim to get the reward. So Jim is the easy target for people to aim at. He is an unlucky lamb who is controlled by others according to their will.
Even Jim’s companion and friend Huck doesn’t treat Jim as an equal human being as the white man. Though they both seek freedom, but freedom certainly has a different meaning for Huck than it does for Jim. Huck’s narration of freedom, leisure and good companionship on the raft conflicts with Jim’s slave narration. For the latter contains a version of freedom which means clear himself from the chains and fetters of slavery. When Cairo approaches, Jim gets very excited and he describes his bright future. He can work hard to buy his wife and children out of the slavery, so they will all be free and live together happily. Jim’s words make Huck get very uneasy. He immediately slips black into the language of the dominant culture and takes over the hegemonic language as a way of gaining power over Jim. He said with racist slur: “give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.” 1If Jim will not go easily with Huck’s plot, he can simply be handed back to his former owners. In fact, Huck never divests himself completely of the attitudes towards Negro slaves instilled in him by his society. For example, Huck’s reaction to Jim’s homesickness shows that he has not yet begun to look upon his friend as a real human being. In chapter 31, Jim is sold as a runaway slave for forty dollars by the two confidence men. Huck has a prolonged tussle with his conscience when he learns this. At last, he resolves to help Jim escape. He says to himself, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” 1(p.180) Here, his moral dilemma is brought about by a corrupt society that has institutionalized slavery. Also in Chapter 32, Aunt Sally asks Huck if anyone was hurt when the explosion occurred on the steamboat. Huck promptly replies, “No’m. Killed a nigger,” to which the old lady adds, “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.” 1(p.185) This little exchange clearly outlines the position of slaves like Jim in the South at that time.
Worst of all Jim himself is also affected deeply by the dominant culture. When he runs off to Jackson Island, he tells Huck, “I owns myself, en I’s with eight hund’d dollars I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’t want no mo’.” 1Jim judges his own worth as property in the dehumanizing terms of economic exchange. In doing so, he shows how far the language and values of the white masters of this society have influenced his own way of thinking and speaking; he is unable to break fully free form his slave self. Jim’s brief speaking part in the last chapter focuses on his new financial status, the forty dollars Tom has given him that pleased him most to death. There is no hint of resentment here at Tom’s exploitative behavior, the way he has been used as a puppet to the latter’s imaginative needs. Further more, Jim is an illiterate, primitive and superstitious man. He believes that the hidden forces governing the world manifest themselves in signs and omens. This is also a drawback for him to achieve his freedom.
3.Historical situations on black issue
Mark Twain gives his novel a happy ending and the fugitive slave Jim has got his freedom. This is a tradition of the mainstream literature in the 19th century. Jim might be legally free with the forty dollars in his pocket, but he is left alone, eleven hundred miles form home, and apparently has been forgotten by Huck. The limits of his freedom are apparent with any knowledge of the status of the free slave in the region at the time. Victor Doyno summaries:
“A manumitted black would certainly not enjoy genuine freedom in 1845… The likelihood of Jim earning enough money to purchase his wife and children is close to zero…[A]nyone could contest the freed status of a Black such as Jim by claiming that he was not in Missouri when Miss Watson died. In the 18435-1850 era, Jim could very easily be re-enslaved in Arkansas…If a free man stayed in Arkansas longer than 180 days, he could be imprisoned for a year.”
Here we can see a free nigger doesn’t mean he can enjoy his freedom forever. He can very easily be enslaved again. Further more, freedom was also a highly problematic term as it applied to black lives in the South after the War. The freedom granted by the Thirteenth Amendment signified, for African-Americans, the end of oppressive and dehumanizing white authority and a chance for new forms of self-development and autonomy and equal rights such hopes quickly evaporated, together with the first promises of reconstruction. As W.E.B. Dubois wrote: “the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then move back again toward slavery.”In the 1840’s in Southern Illinois, laws of the state directed county officials to arrest any Negro who could not show freedom papers signed by his former master. Jim seems to have been familiar with the status of Negroes in Illinois, for in calmer moments he and Huck had wisely planned to go for up the Ohio River by steamboat, perhaps as far as the state of Ohio, where they might have established contact with the underground Railway. With this sort of help they would have had a good chance to reach Canada, in the manner of Eliza and George Harris in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Only in Canada would Jim be immune from arrest and delivery back to his mistress. If he does so regardless his wife and children he may get his freedom, but his family reunification is out of the question.
4. Conclusion
To conclude, Jim’s long journey of pursuing his freedom never ends at the end of the novel when he is granted freedom by Miss Watson; it is the very beginning. If he wants to enjoy his “freedom”, he has to give up his wife and children and stay in a Free State or go abroad (actually it is very hard for him to get real freedom because of historical, political and social reasons we discussed above). If he decides to work hard and earn enough money to buy his family out of the slavery, he must risk the danger of re-enslavement.
References
[1]Nash Smith, Henny, eds., Adventures of Huckleberry Finn[M]. Cambridge:The Riverside Press, 1958.
[2]Doyno, Victor A., Writing Huck Finn: Mark Twain’s Creative process[M].Pennsylvania: University of Philadelphia Press, 1991, p230.
[3]Foner, Eric,Reconstruction: America’s unfinished revolution,1863-1877[M].New York: Harper and Kow, 1988, p.602.