Morality In Mark Twain's Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s masterpiece Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a story about an uncultured Southern boy, Huckleberry Finn, and a runaway slave, Jim, who travel down the Mississippi River in search for freedom. Protagonist Huck Finn, following his own conscience and establishing his own principles based on his interpretations of morality, narrates this story. Though Huck himself undergoes a moral transformation in this work, considerable debate rages as to whether he is an epitome of goodness or the exemplification of “racist trash.” While many literary critics praise Twain’s work to be thought provoking, reflective, and rightly critical of the institution of slavery, there are others who believe this novel to be offensive and disparaging of African

While on one hand Jim is depicted as a superstitious and ignorant slave who believes “witches bewitched him and put him in a trance” when he can’t find his hat, there are other moments when the reader realizes that Jim is in actuality wiser than Huck. Critics of Twain’s work argue that Jim, the novel’s primary example of a slave, is often portrayed as childlike and naive. One such critic, Julius Lester, addresses this in his critique “Morality and Adventure of Huckleberry Finn.” By portraying Jim in an inferior manner, Lester finds the portrayal of Jim as subservient and gullible quite offensive. Lester believes Twain’s depicts, Jim the “black hero” as “only type of black that whites have ever truly liked—faithful, tending sick whites, not speaking, not causing trouble, and totally passive.” A black hero is an obedient slave. Lester further accuses Twain of writing a racist composition. By drawing similarities between the confinement of Huck by his drunkard father to enslavement, Lester believes Twain has diminished the horrors of slavery. Author Henry Nash Smith in his essay “A Sound heart and a deformed Conscience” rightfully refutes these arguments. Smith sees Jim as a man of silent dignity who shows loyalty to his friends and family, exemplifies humanity, and stands up for himself. When Huck plays a prank on Jim by convincing him that that the separation in the fog was a dream, Jim’s dignified rebuke shows the slave in his true light. Although it took a few minutes for Huck to “humble himself to a nigger,” Huck apologizes to Jim, which validates the respect that Jim so rightly deserves. Smith states “Huck’s humble apology is striking evidence of growth