Is Huck Finn A racist

A detailed Summary of Is Huck Finn A racist


Is Huck Finn a racist? This is a question that has been answered in several different ways. Some say he is very racist while others state he is just acting the way he was brought up. I don't see Huck as a racist for many reasons. For one he has a black friend. Another reason is Huck believes Jim cares for his family as much if not more than any white man. Finally the most important reason why I don't see Huck as a racist is he feels bad when he tricks Jim. Many will argue about the language Huck uses but truthfully it is just a representation of the beliefs and ideas at the time. This controversial question has been asked hundreds of times and there have been disagreements on Twain's intentions when he added certain aspects to his novel; I believe Huck was not a racist.

Huck seems racist on the outside because of his use of words like "nigger", but the book takes place in a different time than now. The book takes place in the South about twenty years before the Civil War, a time when all black people


I also feel twain made his book seem racist to criticize the beliefs of his time. This is shown when Aunt Sally learns of the steamboat explosion,

"No'm," comes the answer. "Killed a nigger."

"Good gracious! Anybody hurt?" she asks.

"Well, it's lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt."

Twain does not mean this literally he ironically uses lines like this to show the truth about the old South, a society of normal people who didn't consider the death of a black person a death of a human. To emphasize his point, Twain has Aunt Sally continue:

To consider Huck a racist would be wrong. He was treating Jim better than most people of the time period, He considered Jim a friend, and he saved Jim from being caught and turned back into a slave. It would be fair to say that Huck is a recovering racist, because he lets some of society's ideas enter into his beliefs, which caused him to believe words like nigger were all right. For the most part Huck does what he wants to do. I also think that the setting is the main thing that s

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Approximate Word count = 703
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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