Throughout the course of The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin, by Mark Twain, the reader is exposed to mid nineteenth century southern racism, and the terrible effects it can have on its adherents and victims. Despite being raised in the south, Twain makes his disdain for slavery abundantly clear through the development of the relationship between Jim and Huck. Mark Twain employs a pattern of various literary devices in his writing that show Jim to be a human in order to display his belief that slavery is inherently wrong as it dehumanizes African Americans. Twain challenges the reader to see the fault in the common southern ideal that blacks should be regarded as pieces of property rather than having the same humanity as the regular white man
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After Huck sneaks out of bed to meet up with Tom Sawyer they are creeping past the Widow's house when her slave, Jim, hears them and exclaims, "Who dah?"The boys lay still in the woods as Huck tries his best not to scratch the itches that are all over his body. After listening intently for a while Jim decides to “set down here and listen tell I hears it ag'in.” At this point the reader is presented a humorous situation in which it is obvious that Jim knows what is going on and he is simply playing a game with Huck and Tom who lay on the ground struggling not to, “itch all over in upward of a thousand places." Twain uses this moment to show the audience Jim's humanity early on in the story by showing him to be playful and funny just like a normal man. The reader is immediately exposed to the dehumanizing effect that racism has when Jim falls asleep and Tom, who has been raised a racist, wants to “tie Jim to the tree for fun” and hang his hat above his head. This is a direct reference to lynching, a common practice of racists in the south, and shows how racism can quickly take away a mans humanity. Twain's creation of a humorous moment that humanizes a black man that quickly darkens shows how racism can take away the humanity of black person at a moments
After Huck sneaks out of bed to meet up with Tom Sawyer they are creeping past the Widow's house when her slave, Jim, hears them and exclaims, "Who dah?"The boys lay still in the woods as Huck tries his best not to scratch the itches that are all over his body. After listening intently for a while Jim decides to “set down here and listen tell I hears it ag'in.” At this point the reader is presented a humorous situation in which it is obvious that Jim knows what is going on and he is simply playing a game with Huck and Tom who lay on the ground struggling not to, “itch all over in upward of a thousand places." Twain uses this moment to show the audience Jim's humanity early on in the story by showing him to be playful and funny just like a normal man. The reader is immediately exposed to the dehumanizing effect that racism has when Jim falls asleep and Tom, who has been raised a racist, wants to “tie Jim to the tree for fun” and hang his hat above his head. This is a direct reference to lynching, a common practice of racists in the south, and shows how racism can quickly take away a mans humanity. Twain's creation of a humorous moment that humanizes a black man that quickly darkens shows how racism can take away the humanity of black person at a moments