The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | The Role of Jim in Huckleberry Finn
In this excerpt, Frances V. Brownell explains the importance of Jim's role in the novel as not just a foil to Huck but as a "moral catalyst" who is key to Huck's moral growth.
At the beginning of the second chapter of Huckleberry Finn, we meet one of the most important characters in the novel. "Miss Watson's big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door. . . ." Jim is to play a role second only to that of Huck in this novel, but the reader is seldom conscious at any one point of the extent of Jim's importance. Even in Jim's biggest scenes, we more often than not come away thinking of Huck rather than Jim. The main point I wish to make in this paper is that Jim is not merely a noble cause or an ignoble foil, in either of which cases he would be...
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