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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This is a 7 page paper that provides an overview of racism in "Huckleberry Finn". It is questioned whether or not the novel actually provides a meaningful rebuke of racism. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KW60_KFlit048.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
an essential part of the American literature canon by declaring the work a fierce rebuke of racism, claiming that Huck is a heroic figure who shuns the cultural conventions of
his society to help an escape slave gain freedom. However, this is an assumption that may not be entirely accurate. Critic Jane Smiley, for one, has suggested that the novels
criticism of slavery and racism is fundamentally weak, and that Huck and the novels other white characters ultimately do little that is actually in Jims interest, never putting forth any
effort beyond potentially harboring ambiguously positive feelings about the man. The question might fairly be asked then: does Twains novel actually constitute a meaningful rebuke of racism, or is it,
as Smiley suggests, a flimsy and superficial critique in which no real concrete efforts to act in the interest of Jim are undertaken? The first major dimension of Twains
treatment of the issue of racism in Huckleberry Finn is the disparity between the idealistic boyhood adventures envisioned by characters like Tom Sawyer, and the actual sociopolitical reality of life
in the postwar South. As Smiley writes in her critique, one might infer from the massive disparity in the text that Twain struggled with "how to reconcile the felt memory
of boyhood with the cruel implications of the social system within which that boyhood was lived" (Smiley 1999, p. 360). Certainly, when reading Twains text, one has the impression that
the characters experiences are divided into two distinct narrative streams: the idyllic river journey and the thematically and narratively detached episodes that occur when Huck leaves the confines of the
raft. The raft, of course, represents a potential escape from bondage for both Jim and Huck; Jim from the literal bondage of slavery, and Huck from the perceived bondage of
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