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John asked in Arts & HumanitiesHistory · 8 years ago

I need reasons why mark twain is not a racist?

Basically from huckleberry fin

4 Answers

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  • 8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Chapter XXXI

    ...It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a ni g ge r to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly...

    It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that ******’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.

    So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter—and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

    Miss Watson, your runaway n ig ge r Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

    HUCK FINN.

    I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

    It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

    “All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”—and tore it up.

    It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse...

    Twain could not keep this high moral position (complicated in this statement by the fact that Huck thinks he is doing wrong when he is doing right). However, he saw the dilemma exactly. He knew what he had to do even if it was too hard for him to do it (the remainder of the book retreats from this position), This is proof that Twain was not a racist: he will overthrow all of the wrong culture of America out of love for a black man. (The fact that Jim was based partially on a black man Twain knew, James Lewis, also supports this idea, as do other incidents from Twain's biography, but you wanted proof from _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn._)

  • Anonymous
    4 years ago

    Mark Twain is mythical for his great works of classic literature. sure, it consists of the N word. that is in simple terms approximately needed, even with the incontrovertible fact that. i ought to never safeguard a factor like racism, and that i do no longer tolerate listening to the N word in any respect - no count if the guy talking is white, black, or crimson. besides the shown fact that, i think that that is in simple terms approximately incorrect to edit it out of the hot copies of the books. sure, that's a derogatory term. it is likewise what grew to become into seen to be ultimate on the time. His books have been written a protracted time in the past, and that they address huge themes. Mark Twain's thoughts are classic, as i've got pronounced. thinking the language used complements the voice and all-around tale telling to make it extra genuine (even even with the incontrovertible fact that, sure, offensive) i do no longer think of Mark Twain grew to become into racist for it. in reality, he writes the slave to be a buddy of Huck and Tom.

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    Mark Twain's writing is based on the regional accents and vernacular of the time period. He included words that are considered to be racial slurs in present day. However, those same slurs were simply the common language of the time. He wrote what he heard. That is how people spoke. It might not be politically correct, but politics was not Mark Twain's gift. Writing was.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    8 years ago

    Because he was an intelligent man.

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