Similar ideas were advanced in Mark Twain’s novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Exercising the dramatic creative license that fiction provides, Twain makes the hypocrisy of slavery almost more searing than it is even in Douglass’s real-life account. He focuses, in particular, on the trials and tribulations that have been sustained by Jim, the escaped slave who accompanies Huck Finn on many of his adventures. Jim tells Huck he has “run off” from his slave owners because his mistress, Miss Watson, “pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough….” (1270). Jim has run away because he is convinced that any fate that might await him as a free fugitive is more bearable than living under the conditions of slavery. Once Jim and Huck meet up in the woods, Twain stops focusing on the maltreatment of Jim and other slaves, and turns his attention elsewhere.

What is most interesting in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is where Twain’s attention turns. Twain’s true narrative skill is not in enumerating the injustices that Jim has suffered nor dwelling upon them. In fact, Twain does very little of either, assuming that the reader already knows about the abuses of slavery because in the year when the novel was written, slavery had already been abolished. Rather, Twain’s narrative mastery can be found in his satirical treatment of white people and the way in which his smoldering wit reveals their hypocrisy. To execute this approach, Twain elevates Jim as a good and noble man, one who “knowed all kinds of signs…,” who, in fact, “knowed most everything,” in order to serve as a counterpoint to the whites who believe themselves to be the pinnacle of civilized society (1272). Jim’s moral compass points true north, and he knows right from wrong; he frequently refers to “de good book” (1284) when making decisions and, especially, when trying to justify those decisions and teach Huck a moral lesson in the process. In fact, Jim knows so much that Huck frequently relies upon Jim’s knowledge and intuition. More than focusing on the indignities that Jim has suffered, Twain portrays Jim as among the most civilized of the adult characters and then turns his attention toward exposing the hypocrisy of white people, even those who did not overtly support slavery.

Like Douglass, Twain reserves his most scathing social criticism for supposedly well-meaning white people who did not support slavery, but who also failed to oppose it openly or vigorously. Twain even, in a subtle manner, criticizes the young Huck, who is consumed with the desire to become civilized but for whom civilization eludes him time and again. Although Jim is an important companion for Huck, Huck frequently makes fun of him, makes him the butt of jokes, and consistently views Jim as somehow less than a white person. When Huck plays a mean trick on Jim and realizes how much pain it caused the man, he reflects that he “wouldn’t [have] done [the trick] if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way” (1296). Still, he finds it incredibly difficult to apologize to Jim. “It was fifteen minutes,” he recounted, “before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger—but I done it….” (1296). Although Huck is ultimately a sympathetic and likeable character, the fact that Twain is not unwilling to chastise the title character and protagonist of the novel nor to create numerous opportunities in which his ignorance and hypocrisy are exposed demonstrated the writer’s political and authorial courage. Like Douglass, Twain shows that white people were damaged as much by slavery and racism as African-Americans. While the latter were often able to keep their dignity intact, the former—who believed themselves to be so dignified and civilized—were unable to do so.

Douglass, in writing his autobiographical narrative, and Twain, in writing his novel, helped to redefine what civilized white society and, in particular, American identity are by exposing and condemning the hypocrisy of racism and all of the systemic discrimination it has spawned. The genres and approaches of each writer are unique and varied in terms of structure, audience, and in some ways, intent, but the effect is the same. Both Douglass and Twain, as citizens and as writer-journalists, explained through their work that it is not only the overt kinds of racism and psychological violence of discrimination that hurt individuals and society, but also the racism that is implied by passivity. By pointing out the way white society attempts to act as though it is a paragon of morals and virtue while on the other hand exploring some of the cruelest issues related to slavery, both authors show how hypocrisy is present and thus point out a great problem with white society in general.

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Sixth Edition. Nina Baym, Ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003, 942-973.

Twain, Mark. “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Sixth Edition. Nina Baym, Ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003, 1244-1432.