Stereotypes In Huckleberry Finn

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is set in the pre-civil war era and begins with the narrator, Huck Finn, introducing himself, the Widow Douglas, and her sister, Miss Watson, who have taken Huck into their home in order to try and teach him religion and proper manners. One day his father, Pap, kidnaps him and takes him across the Mississippi River to a small cabin on the Illinois shore. Although Huck becomes somewhat comfortable with his life free from religion and school, Pap's beatings become too severe, and Huck fakes his own murder and escapes down the Mississippi. Huck lands a few miles down, and there he stumbles across Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who has run away out of fear he will be sold down the river. Huck himself buys …show more content…

One foggy night, Huck, in the canoe, gets separated from Jim and the raft. After a lonely time adrift, Huck reunites with Jim, but Huck tries to trick Jim by pretending that Jim dreamed up their entire separation but soon Jim notices all the debris, dirt, and tree branches that collected on the raft while it was adrift. He gets mad at Huck for making a fool of him after he had worried about him so much, but Huck eventually apologizes and does not regret it, He feels bad about hurting Jim: “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a n*****—but I done it, and I waren’t even sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d knowed it would make him feel that way” (Twain 95). Huck feels guilty for underestimating Jim’s intelligence, but he still fells as if he has to lower himself in order to apologize to Jim, as he shows when he says “it was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a n*****”. At the time when Huck Finn is set, slaves were often understood and referred to in animal terms, which in turn made it difficult for whites to

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