Twain is one of the only white male authors who has ever made an effort at appealing to the conscience in man to try and help particularly white people see the true nature of racism.
Not only does Twain hold a mirror up to the racist white people who lived during that time period. He uses a very clever technique in which to do so. He appeals to a human being’s pre societal state.
Huckleberry is a child. He is also a figure that shuns society and thus finds his conscience.
What is the true issue that animates racism ?
A lack of conscience. It is not tribalism, it is not anthropology, it is not hatred. It is the lack of a well functioning ,well developed conscience.
In fact, it’s exactly the two themes addressed most staunchly in Twain’s Huckleberry.
A lack of conscience in conjunction with complicity in a societal status quo of shunning the conscience. Huckleberry learns that by being taken in by white supremacy (which was synonymous with the society during that time period) it has real deadly consequences for his friend Jim.
In Twain’s world Huckleberry’s white father is a violent drunk . Huckleberry himself is a lying little scoundrel. He juxtaposes this against Jim who is wanted for nothing more than wishing for his own freedom.
Twain’s aim is to prick the conscience of white children to see the atrocities committed by society before they grow up and join the system.
He uses a technique called “exaggerated bigotry.” Which is a mirroring technique by which the reader can see his own bigotry reflected and grotesque. He paints such a vivid and jarring picture of his fellow white Southerners it’s hard to ignore. They see themselves reflected in the society and thus have a yearning to identify themselves with Huckleberry. This sets the mind of the reader on the path to their own liberation. A liberation mechanism that is already present within them before they start reading. It is the light of their own conscience.
Twain even deals with moral quandaries within the society such as is it okay to steal food from society if you are in dire need of it? He then juxtaposes it against the adult men who steal out of greed for inheritance money.
The lies Huckleberry tells are funny on a surface level but if you were to apply them in a different context you would see a damning portrait of society.
To my knowledge there is not a single book in all of English literature that paints a more real picture of the atrocities of slavery while offering a redemption of the conscience through the eyes of a child.
Twain’s aim is to liberate the mind of the reader through the lighting of their own conscience. He relies on the intelligence of his readers. Such as the trickster capitalist figure of Tom Sawyer. He exaggerates Tom’s capitalistic tendencies and relies on the intelligence of his readers to see the system through a moral lens.
I don’t know what the answer is to teaching the book with a class containing black children. But white children must always be introduced to Twain as long as their elders continue to allow racism as a system to persist into the next generation.
