Nathan Gong

English

12/1/2010

One of the themes of Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckle Berryfinn is the

cruelty men are capable of enacting upon each other. Throughout the book the reader

encounters lairs, thieves, crooks, child abusers, megalomaniacs and racists. There is one

character that exists is sharp contrast to the menagerie of the evildoers, the one kind and

lover person, the slave Jim.

Huck’s pap is a drunkard, a child abuser, a kidnapper, and openly racist. “He used

to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me(16).” “I borrowed

three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing

around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a

tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court,

and jailed him again for a week (29).” “He catched me a couple of times and thrashed

me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. I

didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap(32).”

The two con artists going by the titles “king” and duke” are lairs, thieves and two

faced backstabbers. "Gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "I will reveal it to

you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!...Bilgewater, I am the

late Dauphin(164)!" “Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and

says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing

London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it in Drury Lane; and then he
makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing

them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to

come and see it. Twenty people sings out "What, is it over? Is that all(203)?" “Well, the

men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to

them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and

cry, and told the king all about his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over

again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like

they'd lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I'm a nigger. It was

enough to make a body ashamed of the human race(217).”

Tom Sawyer is a megalomaniac with no regards for his playmates or Jim. “Tom

told me what his plan was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style,

and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed

besides(310).” "Confound it, it's foolish, Tom. It don't make no difference how foolish

it is, it's the right way -- and it's the regular way. And there ain't no other way, that ever I

heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these things. They

always dig out with a case-knife -- and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through

solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why,

look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of

Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?(324)" “The

first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion? --

what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a

nigger free that was already free before? And he said, what he had planned in his head

from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft,
and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being

free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time,

and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into

town with a torchlight procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so

would we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was(385).”

The only loving character in the novel is the salve Jim. “She never budge! Oh,

Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing! De

Lord God Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he

live!' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb -- en I'd ben a-treat'n

her so(209)!" "Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain' dead -- you ain'

drownded -- you's back agin? It's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true. Lemme

look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. No, you ain' dead! you's back agin, 'live en soun', jis

de same ole Huck -- de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness(113)!" "Well, den, dis is de

way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz him dat 'uz bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git

shot, would he say, 'Go on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?' Is dat

like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You bet he wouldn't!Well, den, is Jim gywne

to say it(365)? “

Ironically it was Jim who was regarded as sub human by most of his

contemporaries. "Well, you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole missus -- dat's Miss Watson -- she

pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn' sell me

down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun' de place considable lately,

en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't

quite shet, en I hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but
she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz sich a big stack o'

money she couldn' resis'. De widder she try to git her to say she wouldn' do it, but I never

waited to hear de res'. I lit out mighty quick, I tell you(59).” “You see, when we left him

all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by himself and not

tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. So the duke said it

was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around

it(210).”

Throughout the book, Russell Baker has pointed out many evil things society has

done back then and how the looked down on black people as slaves of the world even If

they mean no harm.