Carl Wieck even goes so far as to suggest that Jim is one of the book’s most sincere characters. He is smart, kind, dedicated, and an overall good person. His actions show that he truly cares for Huck and his own family (Wieck 69). Furthermore, despite the fact Twain gives Jim an over accentuated dialect indicative of minstrel shows, he does bestow upon him a sense of humanity unparalleled by any other character in the book. His compassion is so large that he gives up his freedom to save a dying white boy that used him as a game (Nichols 212). Twain’s detractors will still claim that this is not enough; they say that Twain still makes Jim seem dumb and ignorant to the world. Well, they would be right. Jim is dumb and ignorant because he was a slave. This is not saying that all black people are stupid and uneducated, Twain adds a black professor into Pap’s drunken rant, this is just acknowledging the fact that slaves were not schooled and were kept ignorant to the world by their masters (Barksdale 50). Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua postulates that Jim is actually fairly intelligent. While he may not be conventionally intelligent, Jim was able to figure out that Huck was his ticket to freedom (Chadwick-Joshua
Carl Wieck even goes so far as to suggest that Jim is one of the book’s most sincere characters. He is smart, kind, dedicated, and an overall good person. His actions show that he truly cares for Huck and his own family (Wieck 69). Furthermore, despite the fact Twain gives Jim an over accentuated dialect indicative of minstrel shows, he does bestow upon him a sense of humanity unparalleled by any other character in the book. His compassion is so large that he gives up his freedom to save a dying white boy that used him as a game (Nichols 212). Twain’s detractors will still claim that this is not enough; they say that Twain still makes Jim seem dumb and ignorant to the world. Well, they would be right. Jim is dumb and ignorant because he was a slave. This is not saying that all black people are stupid and uneducated, Twain adds a black professor into Pap’s drunken rant, this is just acknowledging the fact that slaves were not schooled and were kept ignorant to the world by their masters (Barksdale 50). Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua postulates that Jim is actually fairly intelligent. While he may not be conventionally intelligent, Jim was able to figure out that Huck was his ticket to freedom (Chadwick-Joshua