SOURCE: Chadwick-Joshua, Jocelyn. “Whah Is de Glory?: The (Un)Reconstructed South.” In The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn, pp. 115-35. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.

In the following essay, Chadwick-Joshua discusses what the character of Jim reveals about post-Reconstruction America and the persistence of racial stereotypes.

All the experiences of the central section have prepared Huck for the final conflict, his decision to free Jim from being made a slave “again all his life … amongst strangers … for forty dirty dollars” (269). With that resolution, Huck casts off his old cultural beliefs and embraces new ones that feel right. Having watched Huck grow, we know that this decision is not predicated on whether freeing is convenient or comfortable. But the bitter satire of the human condition in the final section of the novel impels many readers to ask if its hero is a racist. The new perspective...