The Characterization of Jim in Huckleberry Finn Author(s): Forrest G. Robinson Source: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Dec.

, 1988), pp. 361-391 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3044898 Accessed: 30/08/2010 02:21
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The Characterizationof Jim in Huckleberry Finn

FORREST G. ROBINSON

ary 1885 carrieda reviewof Huckleberry Finn by Brander Matthews, Americanwho would in lateryears an In become a professorat Columbia University. the midstof much observesthatJim,the escaped Matthews thatis apt and insightful, slave who accompanies Huck downriveron the raft,displays"the of essentialsimplicity and kindlinessand generosity the Southern of Jimhas been challenged only negro."'lThis general impression very rarelyin the centurysince the novel first appeared. But in place of Matthews'sobvious approval of Mark Twain's treatment of Jim,more recentcritics have been strongly inclinedto contrast the submissiveslave who appears in the closingchapterswiththe more complete human being who moves throughthe centralsections of the narrative.Modern observersare in broad agreement that this simpler,more passive Jim is radicallyout of character. of He is a mere fragment his formerself,a two-dimensional parody, a racial stereotypewith roots in the minstreltradition, and one symptomamong many others of Mark Twain's failure of in moral vision and artisticintegrity the complex evasion that closes the action.Among the more prominent voices in thiscritical litanyare those of Leo Marx, who findsthatJim "has been made over in the image of a flatstereotype: submissive the stage-Negro," and Henry Nash Smith,who writesthat "Jimis reduced to the
? 1988 by The Regents of the Universityof California

HE London Saturday Reviewfor 31 Janu-

IAs quoted in Sculley Bradley et al., eds., Adventures Huckleberry Finn (New of York: Norton, 1977), p. 294.

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level of farce." More recently, Joseph Sawicki has observed that theJimof the finalchaptersis "reduced to a stockcharacter."2 In much greater detail, and with much greater moral energy,Neil Schmitzhas argued that the conclusionof Huckleberry "is an Finn affront... because the humanityof its prime character [Jim]is patently, systematically ignored." That Jim should offer"to sacrifice life(and the family professesto love) forTom's sake," his he he insists, absurd. He is equally incredulouswhen "Jim'snative is goodness negates the crushing burden of his past" and "tranon scends the pain that has been inflicted him." In the upshot, SchmitzfaultsMark Twain for his surrenderto the racial stereoera. The result,he concludes,is a Jim typesof the Reconstruction who is "shorn of his subjectivereality, longer actively no engaged in the process of living... trapped in the prison of the white man's mind."3 It is not my intentionto take issue with the view that the submissive, all-suffering of the concluding"evasion" chapters Jim contrastsrather sharplywith the forthright, assertive,essentially good but fullyrounded human being who appears in the central sectionsof the novel. Jim does seem to change, froma plausibly two-dimensional completeman to an apparentlyincomplete, racial stereotype. the same time,however,I want to raise the possiAt in bilitythat this major transformation Jim's appearance can be broughtinto clear alignmentwitha coherentanalysisof his characterization. Jim changes, I want to argue, because he sees that he must. I find thatJim's characterization profoundlytrue to is the realitiesof his experience in the novel; but it is culturally true as well in the apparent inconsistency that it has seemed, in the culturalframework, eyes of the audience, to betray.In thislatter, it is not Jim's characterthat finally requires explanation; rather, it is the general failureto recognizethe necessity and significance of his retreatto passivity that we must attend to.
2Marx, "Mr. Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn," The AmericanScholar,22 (1953), 430; Smith, Mark Twain: The Development a Writer(Cambridge, Mass.: of Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), p. 134; Sawicki, "Authority/Author-ity: Representation and Fictionalityin Huckleberry Finn," Modern FictionStudies,31 (1985), 698. 3"Twain, Huckleberry Finn, and the Reconstruction,"American Studies,12 (1971), 61, 64, 60.

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I was first promptedto reflect the deeper on coherence of Jim's transformation Frederick Douglass's Narby rative.Douglass makes it clear that the masters had persuaded themselves, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that slaverywas a benign and morallydefensibleinstitution. one As sadlyironicconsequence of thisdelusion, slaves were cruellypunished for the open expression of their feelingsabout their condition.The dark truthwas too much forthe masterto bear. Thus the slave was obliged, for his or her survival,to retreatbehind the mask of a docile, gullible,pliant "darky"who suffers manall ner of indignity withsilence and a simplemindedsmile.' As Lawrence W. Levine has shown,this strategy clearlyexemplifiedin is the slaves' didactic tales, which illustratethat silence and dissimulation are the keys to survival. To deceive the masterafforded the slave a tasteof triumph, and it gave oblique expressionto his and of contemptforthe immorality hypocrisy the system; but first and foremost self-conscious the resortto a pose of docile simplicity was designed to appease the oppressor,and thus to minimizesufIt requiresno more than a fewmomentsof reflection begin to to glimpse the waysin whichthishistoricalmaterialmightbe applied to Jim.But while Douglass and the larger slave culturemay serve as a valuable heuristic, suggestingan alternative the view to thatJim is no more than a figureof farce,a flat,utterly conventional stereotype, they cannot define in advance what the close Finn will yield. Others have been moved, as studyof Huckleberry I am, to read the novel, payingspecial attentionto Jim,withthis culturalbackgroundin mind. Nearlythirty yearsago, in his crisply and challengingessay, "Change the Joke and Slip the insightful Yoke," Ralph Ellison argued that there is more to Jim than first meets the eye.
fering.

4Narrativeof theLife of Frederick Douglass (New York: Signet, 1968), pp. 35-37. 5Black Cultureand Black Consciousness: Afro-American Thought Folk fromSlaveryto Freedom(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 97-101.

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was Writing a timewhen theblackfacedminstrel stillpopular,and at shortly aftera war which lefteven the abolitionists wearyof those problemsassociatedwiththe Negro, Twain fitted Jim into the outlines of the minstrel tradition, and it is frombehind thisstereotype mask that we see Jim'sdignityand human capacity-and Twain's complexity-emerge.Yet it is his source in thissame tradition which creates thatambivalencebetweenhis identification an adult and as parentand his "boyish" makes Huck, naivete,and whichby contrast withhis street-sparrow sophistication, seem more adult.6 While Ellison shares the view that there are at least two dimensions to the characterization of Jim, he makes it clear that the two identities are not incompatible, but merely superimposed, the "stereotype mask" upon the figure of "dignityand human capacity." This doubleness in Jim is testimonyto "Twain's complexity," and to the complexity of the tradition of representation within which he worked. For quite in spite of the fact that Mark Twain bowed to "the white dictum that Negro males must be treated either as boys or 'uncles' -never as men,"7 his novel is deeply subversive of that prejudiced convention, and permits us to "see"1a complex, complete human being "emerge" from behind the mask. Thus the doubleness is also integral to Jim's "character," and accounts for what Ellison describes as "that ambivalence" in him. If Ralph Ellison anticipates and in some measure informs the thesis that I want to develop here, then James M. Cox provides a model for the kind of detailed textual analysis requisite to the elaboration of that argument. Cox's example is everywhere illuminating, but I refer in this instance to his most recent ruminations on Huckleberry Finn, an essay entitled "A Hard Book to Take." Cox's remarks center on "the system of emotional exchange" into which the novel seduces most readers, inviting the indulgence of moral indignation at the evils of slavery, but at the same time obscuring the humorous humanity of numerous major actors. Here as elsewhere in his work, Cox applies genial but firm resistance to this critical loss of balance, urging us to laugh more, condemn less, and offering surrender to the path of least resistance, the path of the great river itself, as the way to a proper equilibrium. Huck, who embodies for Cox "the essential pleasure
6"Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke," Partisan Review, 25 (1958), 215-16. 7Ellison, "Change the Joke," p. 216.

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principle of ease and handiness," and who thus "retains a true freedom from all conviction,"is necessarilythe focus of critical attention.8 along the way,in his deftelaborationof "the system But of emotionalexchange,"Cox pauses at some lengthoverJim.For most readers, he observes,emphasis on Jim'sgoodness and generosityand humility has the resultof making him seem too gullible and simplemindedto recognize or defend his own best interests:"the more Jim is made a saint the more he is likelyto be the humble victim lackingany semblanceof the shrewdhumanity Huck so amplypossesses" (pp. 390-91). Cox responds by insisting that "surelyJim is shrewd, as shrewd as Huck," and then advancingthroughthe analysisof a selectionof episodes to confirm his position. From the beginningof the novel, he notes, there is evidence thatJim is involved,along with everyone else, in pervasive"tricks, deceit,and confidencegames" (p. 391). Jimconceals fromHuck the factthat the corpse in the house of death is Pap, and he does so out of mixed, to some extentselfish, motives. Just so, whenJim makes his farewellto Huck in chapter 16, he seems to sense that Huck is about to betray him, and thus offersan oblique but quite movingand effective appeal to Huck's loyalty. In Cox's view, then,Jim is no more simple or gullible than Huck; but he is shrewdenough to recognizethatthe greaterwisdom for a slave resides in the simulationof a simplicity "boyish" and comprehensiveenough to ease the combined fear and guilt and suspicion of the white oppressor. This is the lesson that his Finn experiencein Huckleberry servesto reinforce; and his increasing adherence to this hard truthis chiefly accountable for what are perceived to be the untoward shiftsin his characterization. Cox does not develop this line of analysis; but in observingthat this is "the role Jim plays,or is forced to play," he clearlypoints the wayto it (p. 390). In what followsI wantto move much more in as systematically thisdirection, focusingas narrowly possibleon Jim,and on what we mayobserve and plausiblysurmiseabout his will pointof view.This avenue of investigation lead to the general confirmation and very substantialexpansion of the insightspro8"A Hard Book to Take," in One Hundred Years of "Huckleberry Finn": The Boy, His Book, and AmericanCulture, ed. Robert Sattelmeyer and J. Donald Crowley (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1985), pp. 389, 395, 401.

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vided by Ellison and Cox, and it willformthe backgroundto some concludingobservationson the dynamicsof American reader response.9

"The possibility that Huck will abandon or betray Jim,"Cox observes,"is. . . at the verycenter of the whole can never believe in each other journey-and the two fugitives could hardlybe Jim'scircumstances to sufficiently annihilateit."''0 and he is more perilous. He is a runawayslave in slave territory; a leading suspect in what is perceived to be Huck's murder. For white people who know him, he is the object of angry pursuit; for those who do not-as subsequent episodes demonstrate-he is an object of suspicionand heartlessgraspingafterquick profits.
9Several other criticsoffer insightsinto Jim's characterization that overlap with some of the points advanced here. Neil Schmitz, in his often brilliantOf Huck and Alice: Humorous Writingin AmericanLiterature(Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1983), observes that Huck and Jim are each "other's alibi"; he adds that Jim's "childishness ... is largely the product of Huck's childish point of view,which requires Jim's genial sufferance of pranks and abuse." Most crisplyof all, he insists that "there is another Jim beside Huck's Jim in the ample scan of Huck's writing" (p. 114). I should add that Schmitz and I move from very different points of Finn. As a recritical departure, and make differentgeneral sense of Huckleberry sult, the similaritiesin our perspectives almost always appear in combination with significantdifferences. Thus, for example, I can agree thatJim's "childishness" is to an extent "the product of ... Huck's point of view"; but I do not find that this is "largely" the case, nor would I characterize Huck's point of view as "childish." Rhett S. Jones's "Nigger and Knowledge: White Double-Consciousness in Adventuresof Huckleberry Finn" is one of the many very valuable contributions in the special issue of the Mark TwainJournal,22 (1984), devoted to critical commentary by black scholars. Jones is concerned, as I am, with the complex relationships between culture, characterization, and the novel's reception. At points his argument anticipates mine; at others we agree on the questions to be asked, but differ, in varying degrees, in answering them. Several of the essays in this special issue address themselves to the ironies and ambiguities that attach to Huckleberry Finn, and in this their commentary often intersectswith that advanced here. I am also aware of Harold Beaver's bold, intermittently stimulating essay, "Run, Nigger, Run: Adventures Huckleberry of Finn as a Fugitive Slave Narrative,"Journal ofAmerican Studies, 8 (1974), 339-61. Beaver is possessed of numerous insights and hunches, many of them springing from the connection that informs his title. But his essay is so impressionisticand unsystematic,so loose in its movement back and forth between literature and history,and so prone to exaggeration and fanciful analogy, that its value is very substantiallycompromised. '0Cox, "A Hard Book to Take," p. 391.

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So bereft, Jimmust run by night,hide by day, and throughit all endure loneliness,fear vergingtowardpanic, and a cripplinglack of information. revealshis sense of his predicamentbest when He Scott. he reportsto Huck how it feltto be strandedon the Walter back to get He said thatwhenI wentin thetexasand he crawled died; becausehejudged on theraft and foundhergone,he nearly it itwasall up with him, anyway couldbe fixed;forif he didn'tget and if he did get saved,whoever saved he wouldget drownded; and savedhimwouldsendhimbackhomeso as to getthereward, wouldsellhimsouth, sure."1 thenMissWatson Saved or not saved, Jim feels doom closing down on him. Little to wonder,then, that he is alwaysgratified see Huck. Jim may in timecome to love the whiteboy; but fromthe beginninghe needs him desperately.Huck is the livingproof thatJim is not a muran derer. And Huck gives him eyes and ears, information, alibi, and some small leverage when the inevitabledisasterstrikes.On those subsequent occasions whenJim welcomesHuck back to the raft,this desperate need, and the sense of breathlessrelief,provide the warmthin what usually passes for unmingledoutbursts of affection. The boy is Jim's best chance for survival;naturally, he is pleased to have him back. Huck's is one of veryfew faces thatJimcan be happy to see. of But in order to get a proper hold on the deep mutuality the relationshipbetween the man and child, we must recognize that the generalizationworksequally well in reverse.When Huck discovers that his companion on Jackson's Island is Miss Watson's manifest:"I bet I was glad to Jim,his enthusiasmis-immediately see him," he reflects(p. 50). Huck's remarksare often taken to express his respect and friendshipforJim. There may be some but in larger part his pleasure has its founof thisin his attitude, disdation in relief-and unlooked for reliefat that. Upon first covering Jim'scamp, Huck recoilsin fear.He is afraidthathe will be recognized,and thathis deperate scheme to get awayfromhis fatherwill be revealed, leaving him more perilouslyvulnerable than ever to Pap's reallypathologicalviolence. "My heartjumped
Finn, ed. Walter Blair and Victor Fischer (Berkeley: "Adventuresof Huckleberry Univ. of California Press, 1985), p. 93. Hereafter references to this edition are cited parentheticallyin the text.

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up amongst my lungs," he says (p. 48). He retreatsin haste, first up a tree, and then from the island altogether.But the danger "and every of discoveryis even greaterashore; he sleeps fitfully, timeI waked up I thoughtsomebodyhad me by the neck" (p. 50). Feeling,no doubt, as Jim did on the Walter Scott-that "it was all up withhim,anywayit could be fixed"-Huck returnsto the island, and withgun at the ready, he passes the nightwaitingfor the mysterious camper to emerge fromhis blankets. We do not know for sure what Huck anticipatesas he waits, unblinking,in the dark. But he cannot be very sanguine about if his immediateprospects.There are obvious difficulties the face that emerges fromthe blanketsis a familiarone; and there will be suspicion,and questions,and the threatofjust as much danger, ifit is a stranger's. Thus when it isJimwho emerges,an enormous weightof doubt and fearis lifted.Huck knowsJim.And he seems thatJim has run away. "I warn't to recognize almost immediately afraid of himtellingthe people where I was," he declares (p. 51). sort of way; and there Huck seems to thinkof Jim in a friendly can be no doubt that his reliefhas some foundationin grateful release from the nightmaresthat always pursue him into solitude.'2 "I warn'tlonesome, now," he says (p. 51). But at bottom Jimis a source of reliefto Huck, in a waythatalmost no one else could be, because as a runawayslave he is as much Huck's hostage as Huck is his. Huck is "glad" to see Jim,as Jimis pleased to join Huck, not primarilybecause of their friendship,or because of but or incipientpromptingstowardcommunity family,'3 because theyfindthemselves, quite by surprise,bound togetherin mutual desperation.Huck and Jimneed each otherlong beforetheylearn to respect or love one another; and once their needs are satisfied-when Jim is freed from slavery,and Huck is freed from fear of Pap-they separate, immediately. They staytogetherbecause it appears thattheycan use one anotherin relativesafety'2Huck's susceptibility loneliness and his fear of solitude are familiarenough. to For one analysis among many, see my essay, "The Silences in Huckleberry Finn," Nineteenth-Century Fiction,37 (1982), 50-74. '3Robert Shulman, following Kenneth Lynn, offers the most recent version of this position in "Fathers, Brothers, and 'the Diseased': The Family, Individualism, and American Society in Huck Finn," in One Hundred Years of "Huckleberry Finn," ed. Sattelmeyer and Crowley, pp. 325-40.

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a safetyto be matched by neitherof them withany other companion. And thisis so because there is betweenthem,arisingout of their desperate secrets from a hostile, encroaching world, a balance of the power to betray,an equalityin suspicion and fear, and therefore tenuous bond of mutual protection. a The tension and uncertainty between the fugitivesappear first ripples of ambiguity gesturesof ostensiblereassurance. as in "I ain't agoing to tell,and I ain't agoing back thereanyways," says Huck; "I 'uz powerfulsorryyou's killed,Huck," Jim replies,"but I ain't no mo', now" (p. 53). They are much more boldly evident in the seriesof practical jokes thatHuck feelscompelled to spring on his companion,and in Jim'sdecision to conceal the identity of the corpse in the house of death. As several scholars have observed,Jim'sseeming generosity, veilingthe truthabout Pap's by Huck's principalmotivefor flight. So death, artificially preserves long as Jimcontrolsthisinformation, maintainsthe balance of he power, and thus retains a substantialmeasure of control over Huck.'4 This carefully guarded illusionof bondage of course anticipatesTom's cruel "evasion" at the Phelps plantation.And it is that when Jim, free at last, finallyreveals the truth significant about Pap, Huck proceeds, withoutcomment,to his decision "to lightout for the Territory" 362). (p. I have argued elsewhere that Huck's impulse to play mean tricks Jim,and his decision to turnhim over to the authorities, on arise out of an ambivalence about Jim, and about black people generally,that is in turn rooted in the racist ideology of white society.Huck is free enough of the dominantculture to respond to Jimas a human being; but he is also prone to sudden reversals of feelingthatbetrayhis deep immersionin the mentality the of whitemajority. This dividednessin Huck is conspicuously work at in his cruel joke with the "trash" (after he and Jim have been separated in the fog), his promptapology, his equally sudden decision to betrayJim,and the brilliant, spontaneous deception of the predatoryslave huntersthat immediatelyfollows.These abrupt,radical reversalsare evidence of the boy's waveringmargin"4Spencer Brown seems to have been the first to make this point. See his Finn for Our Time," The Michigan Quarterly "Huckleberry Review, 6 (1967), 45.

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ality,and speak clearly to his restlessnessin the ambiguous ties that bind him to Jim.'5 Jim cannot fail to observe this ambivalencein Huck, and he must recognize it as a leading threatto his survival.His management of the discoveryof Pap's corpse is an index to his penetration on thisscore, and serves to reinforcethe impressionthat his characteristic response to the threatof betrayalis oblique rather than direct,dissimulation and manipulationratherthanopen confrontation. Jim quite shrewdlytakes the measure of Huck's uncertainmoods and waveringloyalty. knowsthatdirectappeals He to justice and good faithwill backfireby highlighting the cruel truth that such considerations are irrelevantin dealings with slaves, except as incitements turn them in. Instead, Jim does to of whathe mustdo to survive:he resortsto all varieties deception. His masteryin this line is firstand most vitallymanifestin his seemingincapacity deceive. Withoutthatsimulatedtwo-dimento sional face, thathappy,carefree,gulliblefraud thathe retreatsto more and more as the hostileworld closes in,Jimwould be helpless to defend himself.Naturallyenough, in enteringthisperilous but virtually obligatory game of cat and mouse, he exploitsall the resourcesavailable to him. Not least among these is the deep cultural investment among white people in the conceptionof slaves as happy children-gullible, harmless,essentially good. It is profoundlyto Jim'sadvantage thatin retreating thispreposterous to stereotypehe satisfiesan urgent need-the issue of guilt and fear-in the cultureof the oppressors.There is safety, knows, he in theirreadiness to be deceived. Almost from the moment of Jim's firstappearance in the novel we are witnessto hintsand glancingsuggestionsthat there deceiver at work behind the may be an artfuland self-interested face of the gullible "darky"thatJim presentsto the world. Tom and Huck do not doubt thatJim is completelydeceived by their little prank in chapter 2. So persuaded are they of the slave's that they do not pause to reflecton the superstitious gullibility numerous advantages he derives frombeing so readilytaken in.
15In Bad Faith: The Dynamicsof Deceptionin Mark Twain's America(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 111-211.

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Building on the pretextprovided by thejoke, Jim erectsan elaborate narrativein which he figuresas hero. His pride swells as other slaves come from miles around to hear his story,and to admire the charmed nickel that he wears around his neck. In all of this,of course,Jim'sbehavior and its consequences anticipate who culin striking detail the subsequentexploitsof Tom Sawyer, and who tivatesadventuresthat make crowd-pleasing narratives, wears a talismanicbullet around his neck. The joke on Jim has surelyturned to his advantage, and to the advantage of his slave audience, who gatherfor fun thatmay only begin withsimulated in credulity Jim's preposterousstory,and that findsits climax in Thus the delithe spectacle of white,and not black, gullibility. unconsciousirony,submergedin Huck's concludcious, perfectly ing observationthat"Jimwas most ruined, for a servant,because he got so stuckup on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches"(p. 8). A cognate ironyruns throughthe account of the hairball. It is Huck who seeks the advice of the oracle; Jim simplyprovides whatthe boy seeks,and in the processrelieveshim of a counterfeit quarter.The ironyis compounded by the factthat Huck regards but offersit to Jim anyway,preferring the quarter as worthless, to "saynothingabout the dollar I got fromthejudge." This rather minor moment of selfishdeception, which takes rise from assumptionsabout Jim's gullibility and genial willingness be exto ploited, is abruptlyreversed when Jim reveals his plan to use a potato to fix the quarter "so anybodyin town would take it in a minute,let alone a hair-ball."The ironygrowseven deeper when Huck refuses to acknowledge that he has been fooled. "Well, I knowed a potato would do that,before,"he insists, quite lamely, "but I had forgotit" (p. 21). We suspect thatwhatJim has to say about potatoes, true or false, is news to Huck. But by insisting thathe forgotwhat in facthe never knew,the boy submergesthe awkwardrevelationthatthe tableshave been turnedon him. Such an acknowledgementso conflictswith the racist prepossessions manifestin his attemptto deceive Jim that he cannot rise to it. Instead,as ifto seal the slave'striumph, and to inviteitsrepetition, he clings to the flimsy delusion thatJim has been the easy mark, and not the other way round. These early episodes may be viewed as opening gambitsin a

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very serious game whose leading dynamicsare racistself-deception rooted in cruel prejudice but replete withopenings for maresourceful, hapless, in factshrewdly nipulationby the seemingly victims.Of course, the cruelestjoke is always at the slave's exFinn offersus a window on the waysand pense; but Huckleberry means employed by the victimsin theirattemptto retrievesuch and laughteras are available to them. shredsof power and dignity justified-not least To thisend, all varietiesof deception are fully by the example of the masterclass-in the struggleto maintain morale, and in the larger business of survival.The slave's relish for such duplicitywe can only surmise; but having opened our we eyes to thatpossibility, may begin to glimpsea deeper dimension to Jim's delight in well-made schemes. When Huck reveals the truthabout the bloody scene at Pap's cabin,Jim "said it was smart. He said Tom Sawyercouldn't get up no betterplan than what I had" (p. 52). But Jimis equally impressedwiththe shrewdness and styleof his own escape, and he is ready withgood ideas whenJack,one when it comes to disguises.Not at all surprisingly, of the Grangerfordslaves, leads Huck to Jim's hiding place on the pretextthat he wantsto show him a nest of water-moccasins, Jim observes: "Dat Jack's a good nigger,en pooty smart." "Yes, he is," Huck agrees, readilygraspingthe point."He ain't ever told me you was here.... If anythinghappens, he ain't mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it'll be the truth" (p. 151). But Jim reserveshis most effusiveapproval for Huck's magnificent deception of the slave hunters: "lawsy,how you did fool 'em, Huck! Dat wuz de smartes'dodge!" (p. 128). The ultimateobjective in all of these admirable schemes is deception, always of white people, and almost always by slaves. What Jim admires most in such ruses is the abilityto act on the and cool, the intuitive spur of the moment with resourcefulness the concealment knackforanticipating nextmove,and the skillful of tracks.In a nutshell,he admires the masterfulmanipulation of appearances. Such masteryhas its counterpartin the abilityto surfaces to interpretappearances, to penetrate beneath shifting the truthof things,the driftof circumstance, hidden designs the of others.Thus at the same timethatthe slave contrives deceive to even to the extentof seeming withoutguile, he must also be ungullible. deceived even while appearing incorrigibly

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the From the point of viewof whites, slave's habitof "reading evidence of the addiction of racial ininto things"is irresistible feriorsto irrationalmumbojumbo. It is to thisleading featureof Jim's "racial" makeup that Tom and Huck appeal in their first trick. Jim responds by exploitingthe trickin a way thatconfirms the prejudice that first gave it rise. Thus he has his way,and at the same time reinforceswhite illusions,therebyconcealing the reversalthat has occurred,and assuring that he will have oppormeeting tunities get his wayagain in the future.Earlyin his first to with Huck on Jackson'sIsland, Jim is equally inclined to the inEverything dulgence in what appears to be runawaysuperstition. that passes before his eyes or throughhis mind seems fair game His for interpretation. excess at this early intervalis conspicuous untoward.But it playsto Huck's prejudice,draws and thoroughly his and out his skepticism, thusworksto reinforce assumptionthat harmlessly his black companion is gullible,naivelyoverconfident, if rather annoyingly voluble in the matterof signs. This, I am inclined to suspect, is preciselywhatJim wants. He knows from and delightin the startthatsome of his shrewdnessand subtlety manipulationare bound to come to view if he is to succeed in his So desperate flight. he is carefulat the outset to seal Huck in his prejudiced expectations.Thereafterthe boy quite conventionally slave thathe is so fixedin his conceptionof Jimas a superstitious is blind to the deeper coherence and purpose of his friend'swords and gestures. This tendencyis clear almost from the start,when Huck's and his impatience gatheringdoubts about Jim's interpretations, move him to withJim'sclaims that"he knowed most everything," pose a broadly ironicquestion: "it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if there warn'tany goodluck signs." But Jim's response-that there are "mightyfew" (p. 55) good-lucksigns-though laden withthe hard won wisdom of slavery, and thougha tellingrevelation the dark watchfulness of behind his carefreeexterior, does nothingto catch Huck's attenWe tion,or to arresthis mountingincredulity. are witnessto more of the same whenJimbetrayshis sense of desperationaboard the Walter Scott.Huck responds withblithenonchalance thatsuggests "he thathe has missedJim'sdeeper drift."Well,"he reflects, was right;he was mostalwaysright;he had an uncommonlevel head,

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for a nigger"(p. 93). And the same language-we are temptedto say "formula"-freightedwiththe same racial condescension,surfaces in Huck's reaction to Jim's scheme for learning the truth about Cairo. "Jimhad a wonderfullevel head, for a nigger: he could most always start a good plan when you wanted one" (p. 107). The acknowledgement Jim's intelligence, of even when forthcoming, accompanied by the inevitable is racial qualifier, suggestingthat Huck cannot,or will not, see the simple truthabout Jim that his words of praise point to. While we maywinceat Huck's racistcondescension,we should on also reflect the clear suggestionthatJimnourishesthisattitude in order that he may exploit the blindness that accompanies it. Jim's maneuveringbears the furthersuggestionthat he is from the veryoutsetuneasy withHuck, alert to his acquiescence in the ideology of the slave system, and aware that the boy's best intentions are only half of a perilouslydivided sensibility. is hardly It bear him thatJimshould feel thisway;eventscertainly surprising out. Indeed, it would be surprisingif he did not observe all due caution in his dealings withthe boy whose good-heartedness does nothing to conceal his acculturationto white ways of thinking. " When Jimreluctantly admitsthe truthto Huck-"I-I runoff he cannot fail to perceive the shock of disapproval in Huck's response: "Jim!"(p. 52). And thatis whyhe is so cautious withHuck, so careful to confirmthe boy's prejudiced expectationsbefore movingcarefully, imperceptibly beyond them. But not carefullyand imperceptibly enough. For if Huck's initial response to Jim's penchant for interpretation more or is not much time has passed before his reless tolerantskepticism, sistance develops a sharper edge. Huck takes pride in his own acuity when it comes to reading signs, and he reacts with gathto eringresentment Jim'simplicit challenge.This response is clear in a discussionofJudithLoftus,the kindly woman who penetrates Huck's disguise,but who also alerts him to the danger approaching Jackson'sIsland. I toldJimall aboutthetimeI hadjabbering with thatwoman; and after herself us Jimsaidshe wasa smart one,and ifshe wasto start a shewouldn't downand watch campfire-no, sir, set she'dfetch a she dog. Well,then,I said,whycouldn't tellher husbandto fetch a dog?Jimsaid he bet she did think itbythetimethemenwas of

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ready to start,and he believed theymust a gone up town to get a dog and so theylost all thattime,or else we wouldn'tbe here on a tow-headsixteenor seventeenmile below the village-no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didn't care what was the reason theydidn't get us, as long as theydidn't. (pp. 77-78) The boy's delight in his narrative of adventure and shrewd detection suffers a setback when Jim begins to supplement the story with his own inferences. Huck's resentment is immediately audible in the direct, challenging question that follows his brusque "Well, then." Jim, in turn, seems deaf to Huck's tone. Perhaps the momentum of his insight propels him, all heedless, past the warning; perhaps he credits Huck with a capacity to absorb this challenge. In either case, he forges ahead confidently ("no, indeedy") and plausibly, clearly overpowering Huck with the force of his interpretation, but in the process backing the boy into a mood of silent, sullen defiance ("I didn't care"). In a world where blacks are expected to be amiably dull, Jim has been too obviously smart for his own good. It may be that conflictbetween the fugitives in this matter of interpretation is inevitable. Huck and Jim are remarkably alike in their intelligence and articulateness, and in the pleasure they take from testing their wits against the riddling surface of the world. But they are utterly,fatally divided against each other by Huck's incapacity to recognize, let alone acknowledge, Jim's intelligence. This barrier to respect and understanding arises from the heart of the slave ideology, and we should not be surprised when all of Jim's provident diplomatic maneuvering fails to avert a breakdown. Viewed in this light, it is entirely appropriate that a snake should firstlead Huck to Jim, and that the continuing struggle for supremacy in the reading of signs should come to focus on what to make of snakeskins. It is equally appropriate, and mordantly ironic, that the old betrayer should reappear in the narrative immediately in the wake of the house of death. Huck wants "to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to" (p. 63). Preferring for obvious reasons to avoid this dangerously compromised subject, Jim retreats to what passes for superstition, but what is-like the rest of what he offers up as superstition-a strategic gesture, in this case an

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and evasion. Such speculation "would fetchbad luck," he insists, But when theyfind eight dollars Huck draws back momentarily. in the liningof a coat taken off the wreck,Huck's native hidden relish for reading signs, given an added edge perhaps by Jim's reluctance to tryhis hand, promptsa direct asuncharacteristic sault on the foundationof Jim'sposition. "Now you thinkit's bad luck; but whatdid you say when I that in fetched the snake-skin I foundon thetop of theridgeday to bad You before yesterday? said itwastheworst luckin theworld bad luck!We've here'syour a with touch snake-skin myhands.Well, I we and besides. wish couldhave dollars truck eight rakedin all this day, Jim." somebad lucklikethisevery "Neveryou mind,honey,neveryou mind.Don't you git too MindI tellyou,it'sa-comin'." (p. 63) peart.It's a-comin'. PerhapsJim'sresponse is no more than a retreatinto dogmatism; more likely, it records a glimpse of the trouble beginning to about Pap, fromhis dissimulation irresistibly, emerge, inevitably, and ultimatelyfrom the cruelly alienating slave system itself, which makes that concealmentnecessary,makes escape virtually impossible,and hopelesslyundermines the movementsof goodness between black people and white. Perhaps he sees that the snake is with them on the raft,hidden, but at large now, and coiled to strike. when Huck plants followsalmostimmediately, strike The first there'd be a dead rattlesnakeat the foot of Jim's bed, "thinking some fun whenJimfound him there " (p. 64). The joke backfires when the snake's mate arrivesand nearlykillspoorJim.This "mistake" springs directlyfrom Huck's incapacityto sit comfortably in withJim'saccomplishments the reading of signs. Rather than jokes deacknowledgewhat is obvious, the boy resortsto spiteful of and signed to betraythe gullibility superstition a racial inferior. to the Instead, and quite ironically, joke's outcome is testimony stunning clairvoyance,and serves to underscore Huck's Jim's It to credulous attachment emptyracial stereotypes. also illustrates what I have elsewhere described as "bad faith,"the deception of selfand othersin the denial of violationsof public ideals of truth

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group phenomena, and justice. Such departures are frequently that collaborative denials,and bear withthemthe clear implication people will sometimespermit or acquiesce in what they cannot is approve, so long as theircomplicity submergedin a larger,tacit consensus. It is a telling feature of acts of bad faith that they that incorporatesilentprohibitions against the acknowledgement theyhave occurred-denial is itselfdenied. I recognize that bad faithmayin some formsbe sociallybeneficial, workingto mitigate rigid customs and laws; but I emphasize that in Mark Twain's America the most conspicuous brand of bad faithis race-slavery, in a glaring,almost unbearable contradiction a ChristiandemocFinn racy.Againstthisbackground,I argue thatHuckleberry illustrates,at several levels, the desperate problems that issue from bad faithacquiescence in racismand slavery.Huck's practical joke of truthand justice. And his bad is obviouslyone such violation faithis even more graphicallymanifestin his decision, once Jim is throughthe worstof the pain and danger,to slip out and throw "the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn'tgoing to let Jim find out it was my fault,not if I could help it" (p. 65). at Huck inwardly acknowledgesthathe is directly "fault"forJim's suffering. Quite as clearly,he is ashamed of himself,for he gets rid of the dead snakes withthe intentof hiding his moral lapse fromJim. As subsequent developmentsshow,however,he is also hiding from himself.Before long, on those numerous occasions when he is reminded of the snakes, Huck notes that they have been the source of much bad luck, but neglectsto acknowledge his own agency in the shifts fortune.This denial is at the dark of centerof Huck's bad faith,and confirms acculturationto the his twistedlogic of race-slavery. He never tellsJim the truthabout the the snakes; and he appears to succeed in forgetting painful truthabout himself,and about his relationshipto Jim, that the episode betrays.Of course, the denial of the deed is more potent for harm than the deed itself;the deed is done, but its denial is the next thing to a guarantee that it will be repeated. And it is repeated,again and again, rightthroughto the novel'send, when Huck runs one more time,quite hopelesslyI think,fromthe bad in faithcivilization himself.

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Working against this larger cultural background, it remainsto complete the analysisof Jim'smaneuvering for survival,as we may glimpse it, most often obliquely, within the web of deception and concealmentthat the culture-and the we narrative-casts around him. Most crucially, have determined that he is neitheras gullible nor as passive nor as stupidlygoodnatured as the stereotypeof the slave would have him. On the it contrary, is one measure of his estimableresourcefulness that to he contrives turnthisstereotype his own advantage. He mato neuvers behind the mask that the whiteoppressors,in bad faith denial of their fear and guilt, have thrustupon him. He is, we simulationand dissimulahave seen, a master of self-interested tion, though it is clear as well-most especially in his ultimate disclosureabout Pap-that he is not deceived by his own acts of deception. We may now advance a step furtherin this line of analysis,to observe that whileJim is not the fool of his own acts of deception, he is not blind to the factthat other people-most often white people-are. Indeed, there is evidence that this inserves him sightinto the dynamicsof the culture of race-slavery as the basis for subtle,oftenveryeffective manipulation.But it is also clear thatJim'spenetration, especiallyas it applies to Huck, is won at a considerable price in humiliationand danger. This developing dimension in Jim's perspective may be glimpsedin his periodic referencesto the bad luck broughton by Huck's handling of the snakeskin.Rather than expel this painful episode from memory, Jim clings to it, drawingupon it to raise the specterof imminent disaster, and to assign the disastera specificcause. Thus a few days after the nearly fatal 'joke," Huck vows thathe "wouldn'tever take aholt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it.Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that handling a snake-skin was such awfulbad luck thatmaybewe hadn't got to the end of it yet"(p. 65). At one level,such remarksare persistent remindersof Jim'sapparentlysuperstitious in investment the inof signs. But they also serve to remind Huck in a terpretation most direct and painful way of his hand in Jim's suffering.In

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effect, Jim's remarks interpose an obstacle to Huck's bad faith denial. How consciousis Jimof thisdimensionto theirexchange? To what extent is he consciouslyplayingalong with Huck's bad faithdenial in order thathe may,in a self-interested way,manipulate the guilt behind it? The answer to this question hangs on for our assessmentof Jim'spenetrationinto Huck's responsibility the snakes; and the evidence on this score is hardly adequate to I a confidentresponse. For myself, suspect thatJim has had intimationsof the dark truthbehind his suffering.He may have been stirred to a vague uneasiness by the coincidence of the snake's advent with Huck's resolute views on bad luck; and the sudden, unexplained disappearance of the dead snakes may not have escaped his notice.In short,theremaybe a traceof suspicion in Jim'sremarks, of and even some preliminary testing the hidden leverage that this dawning insightaffords. But if there is a hint of suspicion here, it is a rather faint one. The best evidence on this score is Jim's subsequent failure to behave in a manner compatiblewithanythingeven approaching a clear awareness of the truthabout the snakes. This truth for him to bear, and thereforeto see, in part will be difficult because perhaps because he cares forHuck, but much more vitally he has staked his life and freedom on Huck's waveringfidelity. Whateverthe case, Jim does not draw back fromthe nearlyfatal snakebiteinto deep suspicionof his companion. On the contrary, he is confident,not to say incautious, in his reading of Judith Loftus, and perfectlyfoolhardy in aggressivelyadvancing his views on King Solomon, and on the proprietyof human beings speaking French.Jimcannot know that Huck reactsby withdrawing to a sullen rehearsal of the familiar, lie self-indulgent about "You can't learn a niggerto argue," Huck Jim'sracial inferiority. "so of reflects, I quit" (p. 98). Equally familiar, course, is the irony thatundercutsHuck's angryconclusion. For the intelligence that he spitefully denies to Jim has in factbeen manifestin the foregoing argument; indeed, it is Jim's quite impressivedisplay of intellectthat prompts the retreat to sullen, silent denial. It is Huck, obviously,and not Jim,who fails in the business of argument. In what must seem an entirely of appropriate manifestation the gathering but unspoken troublebetweenthem,Huck and Jim

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are next separated in a fog that carries them past Cairo and the junction withthe Ohio River.Jimcannot know thathis argumentativeagilityhas dangerouslyrekindled his companion's resentthatHuck springswhen ment.Thus he is unprepared forthe trick he findsJimasleep in the midstof the "leaves and branches and dirt" (p. 102) that have collectedon deck during the long night's passage. Jim awakensin a mood of delightand gratitudeover his friend'ssafe return; Huck responds by persuading Jim that his memoryof the fog is no more than a dream-and a dream in need of interpretation. Quite clearly,of course, the trickis yet and superstitionthat another designed to expose the gullibility are, Huck assumes, the expression of Jim'simagined racial infeThis time, though, once the cruel joke has been played, riority. Jim recognizes the snake for what it is. You are trash he tells Huck, a person "dat puts dirton de head er dey fren'sen makes 'em ashamed." Huck continues,contritely: I It wasfifteen minutes before couldwork myself to go and up to eversorry humble myself a nigger-butI done it,and I warn't I do foritafterwards, neither. didn't himno moremeantricks, and I wouldn't done thatone if I'd a knowed wouldmakehim feel it
(p. 105)

thatway.

Huck is terribly self-deceivedin his assessmentof the situation. His apology, though appropriate,is woefullyinadequate as a stayagainst his ambivalentfeelingstowardJim. The trouble is writ large in his sense that he has humbled himselfnot to his friend,but "to a nigger."And it is transparentbad faithdenial to insistthat he would have forgone the trickhad he properly anticipatedJim's reaction. Huck knew the trickwould humiliate Jim; that was the point in playingit. What he did not anticipate was thatJimwould respond to the offensewitha sharp, dignified rebuke. Huck was unprepared to hear the truthabout his cruel joking. But his bad faithis most graphicallyevident in his declaration that "I didn't do him no more mean tricks."This characterizationof what followsoverlooks a great deal, not least the decision, in the next chapter,to break his promise to keep Jim's secret. Much criticalcommentto the contrarynotwithstanding, this episode does not mark a decisive shiftin Huck's attitudetoward

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Jim. The "trash"joke is prettymuch business as usual; and the strainof bad faithrunning throughhis apology is clearlyremifor niscentof his concealmentof the responsibility the snakes. But and the episode is decisive in Jim'sdevelopment,for it is the first perhaps the only time that he gives directexpression to his feelreings. He approaches this momentwith great circumspection, before offeringhis interprein flecting silence for five minutes tation,and then settingfortha reading of the "dream" thatgives gave him pause. clues to the considerationsthat initially Jim feels obliged to "'terpret"the "dream" because, he says, he "it was sent for a warning."Such warningssurface constantly, insists, and "ifwe didn't tryhard to make out to understandthem they'djust take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it." And what do the signs say to Jim? They speak to him of the "troubleswe was going to get into withquarrelsome people and all kindsof mean folks."But, he goes on, "ifwe minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull which throughand get out of the fog and into the big clear river, was the free States,and wouldn'thave no more trouble"(p. 104). There are few if any good signs,and the "troubles"thatJimsees all attach to "quarrelsome people" and "mean folks,"which is to say, to whitepeople in general, those potentialand real enemies who must be avoided whenever possible, and agreed with and coddled when necessary,if he is to have any chance of success. of Clearly,these are not the sentiments a deeply superstitious man. Bad luck forJimis not blind; ratherit is blindnessto signssigns that yield to interpretation-thatgives the turn to fortune. is Jim's interpretation a shrewd assessmentof the hostile white in who stand everywhere his way,and an equally shrewd majority program for avoiding and evading them. In the service of this or a Jimwill be invisible, else two-dimensional, gullible, objective, docile, goodnatured "darky."Quite on purpose, quite by design, in Jim takes refuge in the stereotype, the mask, of the smiling, harmlessblack "yes-man." utterly superstitious, beJim pauses at lengthbefore venturinghis interpretation cause he is undecided whetheror not he has in facthad a dream. In the midst of other thoughtsthat may run through his head, about Huck mustassume a prominentplace. Jim thisuncertainty may also give attentionto the possible consequences of calling

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Huck's bluff; and he may find righteousinterpretation righor teous indignation, the likelyalternative outcomes of going along, more attractive than the small but equally perilous pleasures of flatly declaring Huck a liar. Whateverthe case may be, doubt of Huck is at the bottomof Jim's long pause, just as doubt, more broadlyof whitepeople, formsthe bedrock of his reading of the "dream." Jimis certainly the righttrackin his interpretation, on though as subsequent developments stronglysuggest, he does not go nearly far enough toward complete skepticism.Willy-nilly, is he forcedto call Huck a liar (Huck blithely virtually admitsas much); and he is too stung by the revelationof Huck's betrayal, own his blindness,and the crueltyof his fate, to check the overflowof pain and anger. His recoil fromthe joke, we must suppose, is a momentwhen deep, genuine feelingbreaksthrough;but we must also recognize, as Jim must in time, that this surrender to authenticity a grave mistake. For if his words work as a lash to is Huck's conscience,then the pain of guilt,subtlytransformed by to bad faithdenial, leads directly the decision to turnJim in. When Jim calls Huck "trash," he indicates that his doubts about his young companion have moved to a new level of resoevidence thatwhile lution.Jim is now the possessor of irresistible Huck is at timesa great boon, he is equally a part of the terrible trouble.It is quite conceivablethatJim looks back, in the lightof this episode, at the encounter with the snakes, and findsample for confirmation earliersuspicions.Jimmaynow perceivethatthe snake has been withhim on the raftall along. Most clearlyof all, he now sees thatHuck mustbe numberedwiththe snags and towheads, with all those "troubles" leading ineluctablyback to all those mean, quarrelsome whitepeople who stand in his way. in Not surprisingly, Jim'snext appearance in the narrative he is totally preoccupiedwithCairo and the Ohio Riverand the prospect of freedom. No doubt he is buoyed up by his recent moral but his almost frantic animationsuggeststhat a measure victory; confirmedfears,is also at large in of panic, the issue of freshly his mood. Huck, meanwhile,just as borne down by his abrupt, has displaced his miseryin spasms of concrushinghumiliation, to science overJim'sbehavior,and in a cozy commitment do right by poor Miss Watson. Buoyed up in turn and feeling"lightas a

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of feather"in his evasion of guilt,and in the pious rationalization his urge to put the uppityslave back in his place, Huck prepares to leave the raft, to ostensibly inquireabout Cairo, in factto betray his friend.Jim senses that somethingis amiss. Huck's departure, which may remind him of their ill-fatedseparation in the fog, seems to stirthe fearssubmergedin his ratherfervidelation.Sudassertionsof independent initiative denly his levitating give way to declarations of absolute dependence on Huck and undying gratitudefor his faithful friendship. for soon I'll be a-shout'n joy, en I'll say,it'sall on ac"Pooty everben free ithadn' ef counts o'Huck;I's a freeman,en I couldn't everforgit Huck;you's ben forHuck; Huckdone it.Jimwon't you, de bes' fren' Jim'sever had; en you'sde onlyfren'ole Jim'sgot now." (p. 125) Not only do these remarksbreak withthe mood of exultantselfassertionthat precedes them,but theysit ratheroddly withJim's on recentobservations "trash."There is, in short,somethingfalse about Jim's outpouring of gratitude and friendship.But such falsenessis true in a deeper sense to the featuresof the mask of the gullible,optimistic, gratefulslave thatJim is obliged to wear. This simulatedidentity, knows,is his bestdefenseagainstwhite he and infidelity. cruelty And, of course, it works.Huck failsentirely to perceive the inaccuracyof Jim'scharacterization their relaof tionship, and he failsbecause Jim'sservilegratitude conforms perto fectly the contoursof his bad faithdenial. Huck is comfortable an betraying uppityJim; but this fawningman-childso satisfies his fond expectationsthat (he says) "it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me." His resolutionslips even furtherwhen Jim continues,"Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y whitegenlman dat ever kep' his promise to old Jim" (p. 125). It is remarkable that Huck is so ready to accept thischaracterization himof self,so proof,in his bad faith, againstthe powerfulironiespoised in full view on the face of Jim'swords. Characteristically, of one the broadestof these ironiesturnson the factthatthe innocence, the gullibility, hapless surrenderto falsebut grateful the illusions, is hardlyJim's. It is also remarkablethatJim is willingto range so far from the truthin maneuveringforhis safety. Such boldness is a tribute

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to his acuity in measuring Huck's self-deception, but it is also a mark of desperation. His fear is of course well founded. He can hardly know that his appeal to Huck's bad faith, while shrewdly orchestrated, is finally not enough to stop the boy, who goes reluctantly forward, muttering "I got to do it-I can't get out of it." But he must suspect and fear the worst. And he is a witness in terror to the sudden arrival of the slave hunters, who intercept Huck; he sees, and waits in fear as Huck pauses, obviously weighing the alternatives, when asked: "Is your man white or black?" (p. 125). If we imagine that all the drama here is in Huck's mind, then we miss the even greater tension, the terror verging on blind panic, that Jim must endure as the boy wavers over an answer. He is of course perfectly alive to the brilliance of Huck's subsequent evasion of the encroaching predators. But his gratitude must pale before the much darker emotions that attach to this spectacle of white cruelty and greed. We must imagine that he is inwardly numb and quivering, a deeply shaken man. He cannot fail to have noticed the ease and skill with which Huck moves in the terriblyfallen adult world. Huck knows his way around; indeed, were he not much more adept than the slave hunters at the darkly cynical game, Jim would pay a heavy price. But Jim sees that the obvious correlative to Huck's intuitive mastery of adult strategies of deception is an impulse, here only barely restrained, to join the enemy. Now more clearly than ever Jim perceives that the snakes on Jackson's Island, and the other serpentine tricks that have pursued him down the river,are akin in important ways to the varieties of evil manifest in the slave hunters. As they drift downriver away from this near disaster, but ever deeper into even graver potential dangers, Jim begins to face the fact that Cairo, and the slender hope that Cairo holds out, are now behind him. "Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night," Huck ventures. Jim replies: "Doan' less talk about it, Huck. Po' niggerscan't have no luck. I awluz 'spected dat rattle-snake skin warn'tdone wid its work." "I wish I'd neverseen thatsnake-skin, Jim-I do wish I'd never laid eyes on it." "It ain'tyo' fault,Huck; you didn' know.Don't you blame yo'self 'bout it." (p. 129)

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not fully The ironies here are multipleand, quite appropriately, penetrable.Does Huck's regretat having seen the snakeskinbear of concealed withit the unspoken acknowledgement his carefully for moral responsibility the troublesthatthe snakes broughtwith as them?If so, then Huck suffers exquisitely Jim tendershis emhas Huck's bad faith denial phatic absolution. Or, alternatively, advanced to the point that he is no longer conscious of the guilt stirredin him? If this is the case, then that the snakes formerly at the ironyis just as painfully his expense, and equally an index to his immersionin bad faith.In eithercase, there is a quite extraordinaryover-arching irony to be observed-namely, that whetherhe is conscious of it or not, Huck's bad faithdenial leads thatsuperstitious viewof snakes him intothe adoption of precisely thathis originalpractical joke was designed to expose and ridicule. Turning to Jim'srole in the dialogue, we come upon another, even sharper edge to the irony.For while Huck retreatsto transparent bad faithcredulousness,Jim maneuvers,in full self-consciousness, behind a mask of simulated superstition.He knows and conceals what Huck does not wantto know,and conceals.Jim does this because he is aware that anythingapproaching a full disclosure of Huck's actual role would threatena break in the slender thread of hope that their troubled friendshipholds out. Thus he opts for the appearance of tenacious gullibility because it confirms the white stereotypeof the slave mentality, and thus plausiblystands in place of the truth-about Jim'shumanityand and rage, and about his young friend'sspitefulracist suffering malice-none of which Huck can bear to acknowledge,least of all to Jim,and at Jim'sbidding. Huck denies the truthabout the snakes because he cannot bear it; Jim is denyingit too, because he recognizesthat for a slave in the twistedmoral world of racethe trouble. slavery, truthcan onlyexacerbatethe already terrible Meanwhile,if it gives him some consolationto look on as Huck squirms in bad faith,it is, we must suppose, a slender,bitterreward. For in assuring Huck that "it ain't yo' fault,"he is telling the boy exactlywhat he wantsto hear, and to believe. Huck's subsequent observationson the snakes do not clearly resolve the question of the level of his consciousnessin bad faith. But it is tellingthat the words are not shared withJim. Rather, theyare a silentresolution, advanced in the name of necessity and

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rooted in superstition, keep silence on the score of snakeskins. to "We both knowed well enough," he reports,when the raft and canoe disappear during the night,that "it was some more work of the rattle-snake skin; so what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was findingfault, and that would be bound to fetchmore bad luck-and keep on fetching too, till it, we knowed enough to keep still"(p. 130). This ostensiblesurrenconceals Huck's deep, der to superstitiousnecessityimperfectly and tearsin him. desperate wishto be freeof bad faithas it twists His outward submissionis in facta blind plea. But so long as he of continues to deny in bad faith the truthabout his treatment Jim,that truthwill continue to haunt him and to elude him. For thatlong he will continueto violateJimwithoutfullyknowingit, he will continue to run withoutgettinganywhere,and, if he is ever Mark Twain, he willcontinueto writethisdark storywithout being able to finishit. For Jim, meanwhile,bound as he is to a in kind of silentcomplicity thisacceleratingcycle,there is no obvious way to avert almost inevitabledisaster. It is over this complex spectacle of errant human suffering thatthe monstroussteamboatsweeps at the end of chapter 16. It comes clearly,if ratherobliquely,injudgment of the godforsaken raft;but it comes as well as an agencyof relief-of brief,bad faith troubleat the heart of Mark Twain's story. oblivionto the terrible Here the teller set his masterpieceaside for several years. And here Jimis separated fromHuck. For awhile at least,theycan go no further.

The reunion of the fugitives after the feud section in chapters 17-18 is clear evidence thatJim feels more secure withHuck's company on the raftthan he does withoutit. a vitalresource. Huck maybe trouble,but he is also intermittently At the same time, Jimis chastenedand cautiousin rejoiningHuck, and displays a resolve to retreatbehind a mask of silence and unquestioningcompliance. We see and hear much less of Jim in the remainderof the novel. To an extent, course,thisis because of the action turns away from him; but he is also quite markedly inclinedto turnaway fromthe action when it comes his way.Jim

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has tried being "visible"and frank,opinionated, assertive,even withHuck, and the invariableresulthas been trouargumentative ble. He has come to see that Huck, for all of his good nature, is quite unprepared to tolerate the full unfolding of the human being emergent from behind the mask of the happy, gullible, and danger, ratherchildlikeslave. At no littleprice in suffering Jim finallylearns to apply to Huck the formula that he earlier advocated for relationswithall mean and quarrelsomewhitepeople: "ifwe minded our businessand didn'ttalkback and aggravate them,we would pull through"(p. 104). in The evidence forthisshift Jim'sbehavior,and in the modified perspectiveto which it gives rise, is generallyso clear and consistentthat it requires littlecomment.When there is another of occasion (in chapter 19) to disagree about the interpretation into silence. When Huck conceals signs in the fog,Jimwithdraws the truthabout the king and the duke, Jim is not fooled, but he is careful to test the evidence withoutbetrayinghis own suspicions.16 Of course, Jim has good reason to be wary of the charlatans. From the very beginning it is clear that they have it in Jim mind to turna quick profit sellinghim intocaptivity. knows by this; and he triesto draw Huck more fullyto his side, suggesting that the aristocrats are reallyfrauds,and then by dramatizingin an oblique way the terribleinjustice and pathos of his circumbecause stances.'7 But Huck cannot, or will not, hear, primarily Jim is his own secretsmake him hostage to the confidence-men. well aware of Huck's reluctanceto abandon the kingand certainly self-interest the duke, and he seems to have glimpsed the furtive upon whichit rests.Thus he endures withoutprotestthe increasinglydangerous conditionsthatthe schemingfraudsimpose upon must be extreme.'8. him. His terrorand hopeless frustration Later on, as the Wilks episode unfolds, Huck has so much "on" the king and the duke that he feels unthreatenedby them,
'6Jim asks the king to speak French, and finds-as he must have expected to find-that the old fraud cannot (p. 176). '7See my analysis of Jim's indirect appeal in chapter 23 (In Bad Faith, pp. 16771). '81n chapter 24 Jim describes his solitarycondition on board the raftas "laying tied a couple of years every day and trembling all over every time there was a sound" (p. 204).

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and is thus prepared to lay plans for getting"rid of the frauds." and Unfortunately, as the heartlesssale of the Wilks'sslavesserves to suggest,it is too littletoo late.'9 This can scarcelysurpriseJim. He has seen the trouble coming,just as he sees it coming again Jim is of parody of race-slavery. in Tom Sawyer'sself-indulgent course much more alert to the danger of Tom's "evasion" than either of his saviors,but he is also by now seasoned to the exas tremesof whitemindlessnessand cruelty, he is no doubt prepared for Huck's passive acquiescence in the really dangerous is restrained;if there game. Through it all, his resistance carefully is any hope at all, he knows,it is in silent,smilingcompliancewith the behind his dethe oppressors.This is quite evidently strategy cision to stay and seek help rather than run away when Tom is wounded. He knows too well that runningwith Huck will do no good; so he adopts the only course of action open to him, and in behaves as the whitepeople expect him to. Jim is so masterful takinghis part thatthe doctor is moved to declare, "he ain't a bad to nigger,"and Huck reflects himselfthat "he was white inside" (pp. 352, 341). The ironyin these absurd concessionswill strikeus as more or less gross depending on our penetrationinto Jim's point of in self-conscious adopting view.If we recognizethathe is perfectly the selflessrole that Huck and the doctor so admire, then we will but have a windownot only on Jim'scharacterization, also on the deep trouble that Mark Twain raised in his novel, and then evaded. If we imagine,on the other hand, thatJim is internally as self-effacing and compliantas Huck and the doctor take him to be-and expect him to be-then we will miss thisirony,along

'91t is noteworthythat Jim turns the charlatans in before Huck is able to stop him. We are impressed, of course, withthe boy's subsequent dismay at the spectacle of their sufferingon the rail. But we should be mindful that Huck wants to constrainJim not in order to spare the king and the duke suffering,but because he is afraid that they will take revenge by betrayinghis presence and illegitimateclaim to Jim. As he puts it, "I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellows could get away. I didn't want no trouble with their kind. I'd seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them" (p. 275).

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withmanyothers,and join Jim'senormous audience of unreflecting admirersin the dark web of the problem. Jim'svirtualinvisibility the correlative, the level of audiis at ence response, of the fact that his small triumphsas a simulated "darky"have no positiveimpact on his finalliberation,and may in fact work against it. Though his calculated retreatsinto compliance with white expectations earn him brief reprieves, they bring him no closer to freedom. To be sure, his earlier appeals to the "whitegenlman" Huck, his "onlyfren',"seem to pay offin remembers chapter31, when the boy gratefully Jim'swords as he moves toward his decision to steal him out of slavery.But this illusory.Huck's heapparent advance in Jim'sfortunesis entirely roic resolve quicklydissipatesinto passive compliance withTom's selfishand very dangerous exploitationof the opportunityfor adventurethathis old friendcastsin his way.Thanks to the grand "evasion,"Jim is nearlykilled before he has the chance to enjoy the freedomthatTom neglectsto mention,and that Huck seems free not interestedin pursuing.Jim is finally only half-heartedly outmaneuvershis enemies, but as the rebecause he successfully of sultof an utterly implausiblecircumstance plot. Indeed, we may in even further thisdirectionto observethatwhileJimis forced go for his survivalinto the role of a happy, harmless "darky,"this necessaryretreatyields short range dividends only at the heavy price of confirming stereotype the that his whiteoppressors first enforce and then prey upon. It is the cruelest irony of all that to Jim'sobligatorydenial of the injusticehe endures contributes the continuedlife and increasingweightof that same intolerable offense.Bad faiththusimposes a bitterly knowingversionof itself upon its victims. ironicpatternis recapitulatedin an audience reThis grimly that construes sponse that fails to look past Jim'sdocile exterior, his smilingcompliance as evidence that he is either flawed as a character or "white inside," and that regards his freedom as a reward,conferredsomehowby Huck, forexemplarydeportment. Such a response-far and awaythe mostcommon response-fails to his entirely recognize thatJim'scharacterization, behavior as it is represented in the novel, makes perfectly good sense as the

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adaptation of a runawayslave to the special circumstances enhe counterson board the raftand along the river.20 The failure to get and keep a hold on this perfectly plausible human being is of symptomatic the much broader culturalevasion that the novel so brilliantly dramatizes.If we fail to follow Jimbehind the mask, of if we fault Mark Twain for the inconsistency his portrait, and forinserting two-dimensional a stickfigurein the place of a man, then we have failed to recognize the reallyawesome authority of our cultureas it informs racistconventions the governingthe representationof blacks in Mark Twain's time and since, and the conventionsgoverningthe reception of such figuresduring the same period. This response marks us as bearers of the culture, of that rooted deeply in the bad faithcontradictions race-slavery, has found its premieragent in Mark Twain, and its leading popular expression in Huckleberry Finn, the nation's favoritebook about its most painful and enduring dilemma. Finn not only beWe returnagain and again to Huckleberry cause it permitsus to ignore as much of the truthabout raceslaveryas we cannot bear to see, but also because in enabling our bad faith denial-a brand of denial clearly cognate with those Finn dramatizedin the novel itself-Huckleberry leaves us withthe uneasy feeling that we have missed something,and therebyensures that we will returnfor another look. One such perpetual oversight-and surelya kind of key to all the others-is the characterJim I have labored to reach in this essay. But the image of the happy, gullible,superstitious "darky"can never be fullyseparated fromitsbackgroundin injusticeand cruelty and suffering, and from the pressure of resistancebehind the bland, smiling face. That separationcannot occur in spite of the fact-and perbecause of the fact-that such a separationis the urhaps finally gent culturalobjectivetowardwhich the formationand wide reception of thatimage move. The stereotype thatinforms Jimwas conceived in the unconscious wish that it might draw attention of awayfromthe disagreeabletendency itshuman model to suffer pain and to resentit; but the trace of that submerged dimension is present,at the veryleast by conspicuous absence, in the bland,
20it fails as well to recognize that Jim, once free, is restored to the mood of confident assertiveness and candor that we witness earlier in chapters 8-16.

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selfless,almost mindless figurewho appears at intervalstoward the end of Mark Twain's novel. Prima facie the stereotypeis inimpressions complete. If we are willingto press against our first of the text, we find that a fuller,much more plausible human in figureis presentby nearlypalpable implication the two-dimensional mask. But the character also gives us more than we are in initially prepared to see; and if we are willingto move further figurehas roots, this direction,we find that the two-dimensional in submergedbut withinreach of recovery, the bad faithcultural dynamicsof our own response. Thus by becomingmore attentive froma kindof tentative candor to the curve ofJim'sdevelopment, and completenessto virtualsubmergencein the minstrelfigure, we are well positionedto learn somethingabout the complex dyand about the cultural namics of his apparent transformation, of construction the role he retreatsto.
University California,Santa Cruz of