Wednesday, October 15, 2008
question 1
It is Jane Smiley's opinion in her critique of Huck Finn that Twain gave the story and characters very little depth and failed to create a voice for Jim. I think that Twain makes Jim and Huck as deep as context allows them to be. Of course Huck isn't a fantastic hero, he's a fourteen year old boy who was raised to believe that black people were property. For him to defy that thinking would be remarkable and clearly wasn't the direction Twain wanted to go with his novel. As for Jim, Twain represented him as he was, uneducated property. Whether we believe that it's right or not, Jim was a slave, he was also a good person, which I think Twain represents fairly well, but the reality of the matter is, slaves didn't have a whole lot of depth in those days.
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6 comments:
I agree in that Twain represents Jim as "uneducated property", but I do not agree with the last statement you made, about slaves not having a whole lot of depth. It is kind of a generalization and I'm sure many slaves had depth. Maybe it is hard to see past their mannerisms and uneducated slang, but even so, they had depth like everyone else.
I don`t understand what you mean by Jim making then as deep as context would allow. This essay seems to have good points, which you have written and discussed.
good start
I agree with Sams point about depth regarding slaves
i wasn't meaning to say that they had no depth, i just mean that their lives were very limited so what Twain presents of him is really all that he is. he's simple
Thank you for your comment. Have a splendid, fabulous, super-de-duper weekend!!
See you on Monday!
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