In your final entry please discuss your opinion of the following:
- Does Jim really become free? Has he escaped? Did he free himself or was he once again at the mercy of the whites?
- Does anyone realize how terrible slavery is at the end of the story?
- What message have you extracted from Twain's satire (and "slavery is bad" is not an appropriate response)?
Jim is technically free; he no longer has to work for free and he gets control of his life. However, he will still be at the mercy of the whites, because he wants to buy his family, who are owned by white folks. He will never full be free until his family is with him. He also has to live with a great deal of inequalities and racism.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone real sees how bad slavery is. Non of the white characters have experienced slavery. Also they would have to believe that Africans are humans just like them, before they believe slavery is bad. The reason slavery was justified, was because they thought Africans were animals, so they were treated like one. A person would have to be able to see that African are just as much human.
Mark Twain is saying that people must think for themselves and not be manipulated by society. All throughout the novel we see a 13 year old boy contemplate about things that are far beyond his years, and the decisions he makes, brings him a few steps closer to adulthood.
1) He had escaped with Tom and then Tom had become injured. Jim gave up his freedom by going to find a doctor. Jim becomes free because his owner Miss. Watson has died and wrote in her will that Jim is to be set free and that she regrets ever wanting to sell Jim. When the Aunts hear that Jim had helped Tom in his time of need they immediately stop treating him like a slave and Tom pays Jim for what he has done.
ReplyDelete2) Huck is amazed at Jim’s generosity of giving up his freedom by encourages him to find a doctor for Tom. He clearly sees that Jim is white on the inside because he cared for the health of another human, no matter their color of skin. Jim’s action was so courageous it was even recognized by the doctor and the crowd that surrounded him at the end of the novel. They acknowledged his brave act of giving up his freedom for a white person.
3) Twain teaches us not to follow the beliefs of society, but to have your own morals and opinions. He demonstrates this by showing how one racist boy can mature into a boy who believes that everyone is equal. Huck turns down his selfish ways and accepts those of different skin color.
Shelby I don't think that Jim is white on the inside, and I don't think anybody has to be "white on the inside...[to] cared for the health of another human." Jim was doing the same thing anybody would do if their friends needed help. The characters might have seen him as courageous, but they still wanted slavery and they were still calling him a nigger. But his act of kindness did increase their respect for him. For the characters to believe slavery was bad, they would have to treat Jim or any other African-American person as an equal and I don't think every character feels that way. Jim being a free man will bring him a great deal of suffering. He will need to free his family, he will have a degrading job that does not pay much and he will face a great deal of hatred.
ReplyDeleteHuck in the book had stated that he thought Jim was now white on the inside. Even though I know that skin color does not matter, people in this time period did believe dark colored people were of lower class. I believe that Jim was doing the same thing as anybody else would do, but it was surprising to the characters in the novel because he was giving up his freedom for the people who had taken it from him.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Shelby about Jim "being white on the inside" it has nothing to do technically with his actual skin color but by how his mind set had turned into one similar to what Huck would only know one as a "white person" due to the time period.
ReplyDeleteFor a novel that encourages people to think independently, Mark Twain leaves some things for one to ponder after finishing the story, such as Jim’s freedom. Jim may well be a “free man” after his master’s (Miss Watson) death, but he will never be free from society. He is free in the technical sense, but society will always look down upon him, and think of him as a lesser man. Jim may well have freedom, but equality is a long way off. For instance, Jim was at the mercy of white men in gaining his own freedom. Jim took no active part is his own escape. He just went along with whatever Tom and Huck decided to do. Then, once they escaped, Jim was in chains when he was brought back with Tom. Jim may well have wanted to care for Tom, but if he had wanted to be free, he would have left him.
ReplyDeleteNobody in the story truly realizes how terrible slavery is. Jim is only set free because he cared for Tom, and because his master’s will released him. Huck is the only one who came close to realizing how awful slavery is, but confirmed at the end of the story that he thought Jim was “white on the inside.” That shows that he still saw a difference between whites and blacks, and that he merely thought of Jim as an atypical black man. If the story were to continue, and Huck were to continue expanding and growing his opinions, he might have eventually seen how bad slavery is. But as the story ends he, nor anyone else, truly grasps the idea of slavery.
Anyone can grasp the message from Huckleberry Finn that slavery is bad, but Mark Twain’s message is much deeper than that. Twain tries to teach us to question society, and that the norm is not always right. The key point to doing both of these things, and Twain’s primary message to us, is to think independently. Twain uses Huck to show this to us. At first, Huck rarely, if ever, thinks for himself. But as the story goes on, Huck starts to make his own decisions more and more. He doesn’t necessarily question society, but he does decide to go against the norm, and do what he thinks is right when he goes to save Jim. By thinking for ourselves, Twain wants us to question society, and do what we, ourselves think is right no matter what anybody else thinks or says.
I don't think Jim has really been freed at all. Sure, he no longer has to work for Miss Watson, but he's been put further into the South, and further into slavery-supporting territory. He's essentially at the mercy of whoever sees him, and at any moment he could be lynched. He's also been separated from his family, which is a tragedy in itself.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think anyone in the novel except for Jim, Huck, and the countless other slaves truly know how horrible slavery is. He had been separated from his family, whom he had loved dearly; he had been forced to work to work as an indentured servant for his entire life; and now he’s a fugitive. Huck had also abandoned his family, and actually had gotten a glimpse of what slavery was like when he was trapped with his father. He had also put himself on the chopping block for innocent people. So in a way, Huck could relate to Jim and other slaves, but his experience still doesn’t compare. For example, he could walk into most any town and not be persecuted as a run-away, facing a possible lynching.
The obvious message in this story is that you must actually think for yourself to truly see what’s right in life, and not always accept the pre-established norm. A sub-theme that could be extracted from this text is that feuds can become convoluted and nearly impossible to resolve if the original issue isn’t addressed and attended to appropriately.
Technically, Jim is free, however; in other ways, he really isn't. He no longer is a slave for Ms. Watson, but his journey with Huck took him far south, where slavery is much more prominent. Jim is technically free for the moment, but he could be captured to be used as a slave at any time.
ReplyDeleteNo one in the book knows exactly how horribly slavery really is. If anyone understands, it would definitely be Huck. Huck spent a lot of time with Jim and learned a lot about his worries and feelings. To anyone else in the story, he is just another black man that should be a slave.
Overall, Mark Twain is trying to tell the reader to not be manipulated by what society says, and to not bebe afraid to believe your own ideas, even if it is against what society says. Huck is the ultimate example that Twain used to show this idea. If Huck was not the way he is, the message would not be clear.
Although Jim becomes a “free” man once Miss Watson dies, many African people of that time were still slaves and therefore most, even the free ones, were treated like them. However, Tom no longer treats him as a slave for what Jim has done for him. But Jim wants to buy his family out of slavery. I don’t believe that Jim will ever truly be free until he and his family are no longer need to worry about discrimination.
ReplyDeletePeople truly don’t understand how terrible slavery is. They take people and use them like they are animals and on top of that don’t even give them livable places to stay. It could be argued that Huck saw the inappropriateness of slavery but based n his comment that Jim was now “white on the inside” it shows that Huck really did view Jim in a different way because of the color of his skin. However, it was not Huck’s fault that this was his viewpoint because all he has ever known was that skin color mattered and he just accepted it.
Twain tries to convey to the audience that just because things are set in a certain way and accepted as ‘normal’, we should not always follow those norms, especially if they are discriminatory or offensive. We as a society need to set norms that are fair for everyone and not just the people with power or money. If society accepts things that are discriminatory or offensive, we need to change the normal way people do things, because after all, we set the basis for what is normal.