FREE ESSAY ON SUPERSTITION: SLAVES: BOYHOOD FREEDOM

SUPERSTITION: SLAVES: BOYHOOD FREEDOM

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the
West at the period of this story --- that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. 
Mark Twain Hartford, 1876 
Dealing with the role of magic in HF, Daniel Hoffman claims a subtle emotional complex
binds together superstition: slaves: boyhood freedom in Mark Twain's mind.1We know how
Twain felt about boyhood freedom - his nostalgia for it lead him to some of his finest
writing, and it lends its charm to his most enduring works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. How Twain felt toward slaves is more ambiguous.
In his autobiography Twain wrote of Uncle Dan'l, the man on whom the character Jim was
based, that his sympathies were wide and warm and that his heart was honest and simple
and knew no guile (Autob., 2.) To the time spent on his uncle's farm in Florida, Missouri
Twain credited his strong liking for his [Uncle Dan'l's] race and...appreciation of
certain of its fine qualities (Autob., 3.) To the late-twentieth-century reader, of
course, Twain's treatment of blacks is extremely problematic. Jim's character presents
many difficulties -- are we to think of Jim as the man who longs for his family even as
he valiantly runs away from them or the fool who gains celebrity among the slaves for a
story he invents and believes? How could Twain allow Jim to assert his human dignity on
the raft, then subject him to a series of gross humiliations at the Phelps farm?
Definitive answers to these questions are impossible. However they and the fact that they
must remain unresolved affect all conclusions we draw about Twain and his black
characters. 
In considering superstition, the third part of this triangular relationship, we are again
left with questions about Twain's feelings. In Form and Fable in American Fiction, Daniel
Hoffman writes that Twain's usual assumption is that white persons of any status higher
than trash like Pap have little knowledge of, and no belief in, superstition 2
Superstition is mainly for slaves and boys. It is important to note that within the
framework of Huck Finn, dissociating a thing from white culture is by no means casting it
in poor light. In fact when put under the scrutiny of Huck's honest narration, white
culture suffers badly. Miss Watson, though good, is harsh and unkind. The King and Duke
think nothing of tricking the Wilks girls out of their inheritance; even the
Grangerfords, who are quality, partake in a vicious and deadly feud. The brutalities that
Huck witnesses - Buck's killing, Boggs' murder - are committed by whites. Although Pap
has superstitions, folk beliefs in the story belong to Huck and Jim, the characters we
most trust. 
While incidents like Jim begging mercy from the ghost Huck and Nat and the witch pie are
clearly intended to make the reader laugh at the ignorance of the believers, are we not
somehow left in the end with the idea that the zealous followers of superstition are
somehow safer than their Christian counterparts? 
In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a boy of German parentage memorizes eight or ten thousand
bible verses but goes mad from the effort. In Huck Finn the Shepherdsons and Grangerfords
go to church with their guns. On the other side, the slaves come from all around to see
the five cent piece which they and Jim believe was given to him by the devil. We as
readers know that the slaves have been duped by their own superstition and by Tom's
mischief, but are we convinced that they are worse off than the people at the camp
meeting who donate a total of $87.75 to that scoundrel, the King, for his mission in the
Indian Ocean? 
Bibliography
1. Daniel G. Hoffman, Jim's Magic: Black or White?. American Literature XXXII March 1960,
pp. 47-54. back to text
2. Daniel G. Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction. Oxford University Press. New
York, 1965.back to text