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- 1. Critical Controversy: Race and the Ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- 2. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Critical Standpoints • Leo Marx, Justin Kaplan, David L. Smith, and Shelly Fisher Fishkin support Huckleberry Finn as an anti-racist text. • Julius Lester and Jane Smiley argue that the conclusion of the novel is evidence of Twain’s racism. • Toni Morrison reframes the debate entirely.
- 3. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Leo Marx • Marx argues that the novel is about Jim’s freedom, not Tom and Huck’s games: “Yet along with the idyllic and the epical and the funny in Huckleberry Finn . . . [this] is not a boy’s lark but a quest for freedom.” • Nevertheless, Marx deems the conclusion a farce that “jeopardizes the significance of the entire novel.”
- 4. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Shelly Fisher Fishkin • Fisher Fishkin agrees with Marx that the novel has a strong anti-racist sentiment but disagrees that the conclusion detracts from the novel’s ultimate goals.
- 5. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Shelly Fisher Fishkin • She argues that the pranks Tom plays on Jim at the end of the novel are an allegory for Jim Crow laws: “Is what America did to the ex-slaves any less insane than what Tom Sawyer put Jim through in the novel?”
- 6. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Justin Kaplan • Twenty years after Huckleberry Finn was published, Twain himself gave this summary of the book: “A sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.”
- 7. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Justin Kaplan • Kaplan contends that “Huck’s ‘deformed conscience’ is the internalized voice . . . of a conventional wisdom that found nothing wrong in the institution of slavery,” and that Huck’s rejection of this “deformed conscience” is what makes him a hero with a “sound heart.”
- 8. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company David L. Smith • Smith argues that “‘Race’ is a strategy for relegating a segment of the population to a permanent inferior status. It functions by insisting that each ‘race’ has specific, definitive, inherent behavioral tendencies and capacities which distinguish it from other races.”
- 9. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company David L. Smith • Contrary to what would be expected from such a social construction of race, Twain “portrays Jim as a compassionate, shrewd, thoughtful, self-sacrificing, and even wise man. . . . Jim, in short, exhibits all the qualities that ‘the Negro’ supposedly lacks.”
- 10. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • Lester: “It defies logic that Jim did not know Illinois was a free state. . . . A century of readers have accepted this as credible, a grim reminder of the abysmal feelings of superiority with which whites are burdened.” • Smiley: “Twain’s moral failure . . . is never even to account for their choice to go down the river rather than across it.” Julius Lester and Jane Smiley
- 11. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Julius Lester and Jane Smiley • Smiley condemns Twain for having Jim prefer Huck’s companionship to real freedom: “Twain thinks that Huck’s affection is a good enough reward for Jim.”
- 12. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Julius Lester and Jane Smiley • Lester implicates not only Twain but generations of white readers for believing that Jim valued his relationship with Huck over his own freedom: “White people might want to believe such fairy tales . . . but blacks know better.”
- 13. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Toni Morrison • Twain’s novel has the “ability to transform its contradictions into fruitful complexities and to seem to be deliberately cooperating in the controversy it has excited. The brilliance of Huckleberry Finn is that it is the argument it raises.”
- 14. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Toni Morrison • “If the emotional environment into which Twain places his protagonist is dangerous, then the leading question the novel poses for me is, What does Huck need to live without terror, melancholy, and suicidal thoughts? The answer, of course, is Jim.”
- 15. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • Twain leaves three issues unresolved in the novel: – “Huck Finn’s estrangement, soleness and morbidity as an outcast child – the disproportionate sadness at the center of Jim’s and his relationship – the secrecy in which Huck’s engagement with (rather than escape from) a racist society is necessarily conducted.” Toni Morrison
- 16. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • Kaplan: “Twain’s novel is probably more faithful as well as less stereotypical than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s beloved Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” • Smiley: The “portrayal of an array of thoughtful, autonomous, and passionate black characters [in Uncle Tom’s Cabin] leaves Huck Finn far behind.” • Fisher Fishkin: “[T]he two books were written to achieve two different ends. One was written to mobilize sentiment against slavery. The other . . . to expose the dynamics of racism.” Huck Finn and Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- 17. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “Huck Finn.” Lithograph of a detail of the mural in the Missouri State Capitol by Thomas Hart Benton, 1936. (The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, page xlvii)
- 18. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “On the Raft” by Edward Winsor Kemble
- 19. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “Jim and the Ghost” by Edward Winsor Kemble (The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, page 85)
- 20. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “Exploring the Cave” by Edward Winsor Kemble (Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 59)
- 21. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “In the Cave” by Edward Winsor Kemble (Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 60)
- 22. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “A Fair Fit” by Edward Winsor Kemble (Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 66)
- 23. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company Anonymous, “Jim Crow Jubilee” (1847)
- 24. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “Jim and the Snake” by Edward Winsor Kemble (Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 64)
- 25. Visit the StudySpace at: http://wwnorton.com/studyspace For more learning resources, please visit the StudySpace site for The Norton Anthology of American Literature. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for Critical Controversy: Race and the Ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Editor's Notes
- This cluster of critical texts provides you with an opportunity to teach not only the controversy regarding race and the conclusion of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but also the nature of scholarly debate in general. These slides are designed to help you guide your students through the key points of the debate and to introduce them to the ways in which scholars respond to one another’s work.
- Marx and Fisher Fishkin provide a good initial pairing to talk about the critical controversy surrounding both the treatment of race and the narrative device that Twain uses to conclude the novel. These two critics work together well because they agree that Twain’s purpose is to expose the racism of nineteenth-century America, but they disagree about how the conclusion contributes to this goal. The nuanced difference between these two critics demonstrates that there are a variety of positions that students themselves can take with respect to Twain’s novel.
- If students are unfamiliar with the Jim Crow laws of post-Reconstruction America that limited African American voting rights, access to education, and the ability to own land, this would be an ideal time to share the implications of those laws with students. The American Passages website has a teaching module that includes a variety of visual aids about Jim Crow laws: see http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit13/context_activ-2.html.
- If students are unfamiliar with the Jim Crow laws of post-Reconstruction America that limited African American voting rights, access to education, and the ability to own land, this would be an ideal time to share the implications of those laws with students. The American Passages website has a teaching module that includes a variety of visual aids about Jim Crow laws: see http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit13/context_activ-2.html.
- Kaplan and Smith are a good pairing to use as a follow-up to Marx and Fisher Fishkin. Neither Kaplan nor Smith focuses on the conclusion of the novel per se, but both introduce broad conceptual frameworks for thinking about the ways in which Twain presents what they argue is an anti-racist message. Kaplan argues that rejection of social approval is at the heart of the novel, and that Huck’s rejection of racism and slavery fits within Twain’s larger theme of “seeking only self-approval, not the approval of others.” It would be worth spending some extra time with the terms “sound heart” and “deformed conscience” to make sure that students understand both Twain’s initial statement and how Kaplan uses these terms to support his own argument.
- Kaplan and Smith are a good pairing to use as a follow-up to Marx and Fisher Fishkin. Neither Kaplan nor Smith focuses on the conclusion of the novel per se, but both introduce broad conceptual frameworks for thinking about the ways in which Twain presents what they argue is an anti-racist message. Kaplan argues that rejection of social approval is at the heart of the novel, and that Huck’s rejection of racism and slavery fits within Twain’s larger theme of “seeking only self-approval, not the approval of others.” It would be worth spending some extra time with the terms “sound heart” and “deformed conscience” to make sure that students understand both Twain’s initial statement and how Kaplan uses these terms to support his own argument.
- Smith’s argument about the anti-racist qualities in Huckleberry Finn is centered in social construction theory, which is the idea that things in the world are not as they are because they naturally or inherently are that way, but because people make them ( construct them) that way. It follows from this line of thought that anything that has been constructed—such as the notion that the color of one’s skin determines one’s capacity for intelligence, moral thought, etc.—can be deconstructed and made anew. It would be worth spending some time with your students to make sure that they understand what Smith means by “social construction” so that they can understand the larger implications of his argument for Twain’s novel.
- Smith’s argument about the anti-racist qualities in Huckleberry Finn is centered in social construction theory, which is the idea that things in the world are not as they are because they naturally or inherently are that way, but because people make them ( construct them) that way. It follows from this line of thought that anything that has been constructed—such as the notion that the color of one’s skin determines one’s capacity for intelligence, moral thought, etc.—can be deconstructed and made anew. It would be worth spending some time with your students to make sure that they understand what Smith means by “social construction” so that they can understand the larger implications of his argument for Twain’s novel.
- The two critics most vocal in their opposition to Twain’s depiction of slavery and African American characters are Lester and Smiley. Both argue that Twain not only displays racist attitudes toward Jim but also creates a convoluted plot structure in order to keep the novel going. This first slide is about how both Lester and Smiley target Twain’s decision to have Jim and Huck bypass the opportunity to seek freedom in Illinois (a free state) early on in the novel, which in turn sends them even further into the slaveholding South. Lester and Smiley make a strong argument that having Jim fail to claim his freedom in Illinois is proof not only of Twain’s racism, but of his shortcomings as a novelist. Shelley Fisher Fishkin critiques this argument (and Smiley in particular) for not understanding “the dangers inherent” in going straight to Illinois for freedom. In this selection, Fisher Fishkin does not elaborate on what those dangers are, which gives you an opportunity to discuss with your class why Twain might have deliberately had Huck and Jim pass on Illinois. What evidence is there in the novel that Illinois is a bad destination? (One answer to this would be that Jim was suspected of murdering Huck, which Huck himself learns when he goes to an Illinois town while disguised as a girl.) What evidence is there outside the novel that makes Illinois a bad destination? (Answers could include the fact that the river border between Illinois and Missouri was an obvious destination for runaway slaves and that Jim knew—or intuited—that his captors would be looking for him there.)
- One of the fascinating things about Lester’s and Smiley’s argument about Twain’s plot, which has Huck and Jim bypassing freedom in Illinois, is that both critics point out the implications of this move for larger cultural notions about African American dependency on white benevolence.
- One of the fascinating things about Lester’s and Smiley’s argument about Twain’s plot, which has Huck and Jim bypassing freedom in Illinois, is that both critics point out the implications of this move for larger cultural notions about African American dependency on white benevolence.
- Nobel- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and critic Toni Morrison takes the debate into new territory: rather than either condemn or excuse Twain for his use of racist language, she instead argues that the real value of the novel lies in the questions it provokes, not in the answers it provides.
- Nobel- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and critic Toni Morrison takes the debate into new territory: rather than either condemn or excuse Twain for his use of racist language, she instead argues that the real value of the novel lies in the questions it provokes, not in the answers it provides.
- Morrison’s insights about the issues that Twain leaves unresolved provide a great starting point for a discussion about the novel’s famous parting shot that Huck is heading out to the western territories. Jim, Morrison argues, helps to keep Huck’s demons at bay throughout the novel. Now that Jim is gone and Huck is heading west alone, how will he deal with his problems? Does Twain even want us to ask this question?
- A number of these critics compare Huckleberry Finn with Uncle Tom’s Cabin , and they are right to do so: both books can claim to be “The Great American Novel,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin because of its popularity in the nineteenth century (only the Bible sold more copies), and Huckleberry Finn because of its popularity in the twentieth century. Both are quintessentially American in that they deal with questions of freedom, individual conscience, and the legacy of slavery. If your students have read Uncle Tom’s Cabin , this is a good opportunity to have them think about the relationship between these two books and their different treatments of race and slavery.
- The image of Huck and Jim floating down the river together is one of the most iconic in all American literature. Discuss with your students what makes this image so compelling (the sense of freedom in nature coupled with panic at being caught for breaking the law, the comradeship of two people from different social circles, etc.).
- What differences do you find between this image of Huck and Jim from the 1880s and the previous image from the 1930s? Aside from the obvious stylistic differences, do the two images present the relationship between Huck and Jim differently?
- Despite how iconic the image of Huck and Jim on the raft has become, the original Edward Winsor Kemble illustrations for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contain many more images of Huck and Jim on shore than on the river. Is the dynamic between Huck and Jim different in the scenes on land than it is when they are together on the river? Look at this and the two following images in light of this question.
- This image of Huck and Jim entering a cave is particularly charged in any discussion of the different power dynamic between Huck and Jim on land and Huck and Jim on the raft. Begin by discussing the differences in body language and facial expression between the two characters. Notice Huck’s calm and confidence and Jim’s apprehension and fear. Why is the child depicted as unafraid and the man as fearful? Does the difference in the two character’s races answer this question for us, in that the black man is infantilized while the white child is granted stature and authority?
- The scene in the cave has one of the longest expository passages from Jim in the novel. How does this image compare with the novel’s prose depiction of Jim’s capacity as a storyteller? Is Huck a respectful audience for Jim’s tale? Does the body language between Huck and Jim in Kemble’s illustration affect our sense of the characters’ relationship in the context of Jim’s storytelling?
- The scene where Huck dresses as a girl has drawn much commentary from critics, both for what it says about the plot devices that Twain uses to keep the action going and for what it says about nineteenth-century attitudes toward gender. Does the racial power dynamic between Huck and Jim change at all when Huck takes on female garb? Does Jim treat Huck differently—or does Huck treat Jim differently—when he is dressed as a girl?
- One of the persistent questions about Twain’s depiction of Jim—and, in particular, Twain’s depiction of Tom’s interaction with Jim at the end of the novel—is whether or not Twain was participating in the racist discourses of blackface minstrelsy. The University of Virginia hosts a website that provides an overview of the minstrel tradition and its relationship to Huckleberry Finn (http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/huckfinn/minstrl.html). Have your students compare images of minstrelsy with Twain’s depiction of Jim and discuss whether or not Jim comes across as a minstrel figure.
- Is this depiction of Jim avoiding the snake intended to be comedic in the minstrel tradition? Is this an opportunity for Twain and/or Kemble to make light of Jim’s predicament and cast him as a buffoon? How does the illustration of this scene compare with Twain’s prose depiction? Is one more in the spirit of the minstrel tradition than the other?