Critical Controversy:
Race and the Ending of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Critical Standpoints
• Leo Marx, Justin Kaplan,
David L. Smith, and Shelly
Fisher Fishkin support
Huckleberry Finn as an
anti-racist text.
• Julius Lester and Jane
Smiley argue that the
conclusion of the novel is
evidence of Twain’s
racism.
• Toni Morrison reframes the
debate entirely.
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Leo Marx
• Marx argues that the novel
is about Jim’s freedom, not
Tom and Huck’s games:
“Yet along with the idyllic
and the epical and the
funny in Huckleberry Finn .
. . [this] is not a boy’s lark
but a quest for freedom.”
• Nevertheless, Marx deems
the conclusion a farce that
“jeopardizes the
significance of the entire
novel.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Shelly Fisher Fishkin
• Fisher Fishkin agrees with
Marx that the novel has a
strong anti-racist
sentiment but disagrees
that the conclusion
detracts from the novel’s
ultimate goals.
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Shelly Fisher Fishkin
• She argues that the
pranks Tom plays on Jim
at the end of the novel are
an allegory for Jim Crow
laws: “Is what America did
to the ex-slaves any less
insane than what Tom
Sawyer put Jim through in
the novel?”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Justin Kaplan
• Twenty years after
Huckleberry Finn was
published, Twain himself
gave this summary of the
book: “A sound heart and
a deformed conscience
come into collision and
conscience suffers defeat.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Justin Kaplan
• Kaplan contends that
“Huck’s ‘deformed
conscience’ is the
internalized voice . . . of a
conventional wisdom that
found nothing wrong in the
institution of slavery,” and
that Huck’s rejection of this
“deformed conscience” is
what makes him a hero
with a “sound heart.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
David L. Smith
• Smith argues that “‘Race’
is a strategy for relegating
a segment of the
population to a permanent
inferior status. It functions
by insisting that each
‘race’ has specific,
definitive, inherent
behavioral tendencies and
capacities which
distinguish it from other
races.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
David L. Smith
• Contrary to what would be
expected from such a
social construction of race,
Twain “portrays Jim as a
compassionate, shrewd,
thoughtful, self-sacrificing,
and even wise man. . . .
Jim, in short, exhibits all
the qualities that ‘the
Negro’ supposedly lacks.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Julius Lester and Jane Smiley
• Lester: “It defies logic that Jim did not know
Illinois was a free state. . . . A century of
readers have accepted this as credible, a
grim reminder of the abysmal feelings of
superiority with which whites are burdened.”
• Smiley: “Twain’s moral failure . . . is never
even to account for their choice to go down
the river rather than across it.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Julius Lester and Jane Smiley
• Smiley condemns Twain
for having Jim prefer
Huck’s companionship to
real freedom: “Twain
thinks that Huck’s affection
is a good enough reward
for Jim.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Julius Lester and Jane Smiley
• Lester implicates not only
Twain but generations of
white readers for believing
that Jim valued his
relationship with Huck
over his own freedom:
“White people might want
to believe such fairy tales .
. . but blacks know better.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Toni Morrison
• Twain’s novel has the
“ability to transform its
contradictions into fruitful
complexities and to seem
to be deliberately
cooperating in the
controversy it has excited.
The brilliance of
Huckleberry Finn is that it
is the argument it raises.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Toni Morrison
• “If the emotional
environment into which
Twain places his
protagonist is dangerous,
then the leading question
the novel poses for me is,
What does Huck need to
live without terror,
melancholy, and suicidal
thoughts? The answer, of
course, is Jim.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Toni Morrison
• Twain leaves three issues unresolved in the
novel:
– “Huck Finn’s estrangement, soleness and
morbidity as an outcast child
– the disproportionate sadness at the center of
Jim’s and his relationship
– the secrecy in which Huck’s engagement with
(rather than escape from) a racist society is
necessarily conducted.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Huck Finn and Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Kaplan: “Twain’s novel is probably more faithful
as well as less stereotypical than Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s beloved Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
• Smiley: The “portrayal of an array of thoughtful,
autonomous, and passionate black characters
[in Uncle Tom’s Cabin] leaves Huck Finn far
behind.”
• Fisher Fishkin: “[T]he two books were written to
achieve two different ends. One was written to
mobilize sentiment against slavery. The other . .
. to expose the dynamics of racism.”
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
“Huck Finn.” Lithograph of a detail of the mural in the Missouri State Capitol by Thomas Hart Benton, 1936.
(The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, page xlvii)
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
“On the Raft” by Edward Winsor Kemble
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
“Jim and the Ghost” by Edward Winsor Kemble
(The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, page 85)
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
“Exploring the Cave” by Edward Winsor Kemble
(Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 59)
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
“In the Cave” by Edward Winsor Kemble
(Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 60)
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
“A Fair Fit” by Edward Winsor Kemble
(Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 66)
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
Anonymous, “Jim Crow Jubilee” (1847)
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
“Jim and the Snake” by Edward Winsor Kemble
(Norton Critical Edition of Huck Finn, page 64)
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton &
Company
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Critical Controversy:
Race and the Ending of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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