The Power of Language in Huckleberry Finn

Year 2017, Volume: 3 Issue: 5, 67 - 88, 21.06.2017

Soran Abdalla Khdhir

Abstract

Huckleberry
Finn is a very controversial novel, and
has made some disagrees between the readers. Most of the issues are concerned
with the way Jim is portrayed. The novel deals with the issue of racism as an
ideology and a cultural phenomenon. Jim is a character who is inferior, passive
and dehumanized through many ways, like the way he uses the language and the
way he behaves. The language is used to represent the black Jim as a subject of
the racist ideologies of his time. The message that the writer tells us is that
although he is a white he fights for the right of the slaves and the persecuted
class of the society. Twain creates characters that are imprisoned by their social
milieu. Huck, Jim, and the society as a whole are entrapped within the confines
of the existing slave system and the other entrapments of culture, most notably
language. Huckleberry Finn is dialectic in that Twain uses the language
against itself. The controversial nature of Twain’s subject necessitates the
reader’s full awareness of Twain’s use of irony, language, and point of view in
Huckleberry Finn.

Keywords

Huckleberry Finn, Nigger, Language

References

• Bridgman, R, (1966). The Colloquial Style in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Burchfield, R. W, (Ed.). (1986). the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clemens, S. L., & Long, E. H, (1977). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (S. Bradley & R. C. Beatty, Eds.). New York : Norton.