Mark Twain first published “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in 1885. It has been hailed as the quintessential American novel and remains one of the most assigned books in American high school English classes, but it can no longer stand alone.
Percival Everett’s bestselling novel “James” is more than a retelling of the familiar adventures of boyish Huck, fleeing from his abusive father, accompanied by a kindly and resourceful man who is a runaway slave. Their escapades still unfold along the expansive waters of the Mississippi, but Everett creates not a retelling but an essential companion piece to Twain’s novel with recognition that the realities of American slavery lie in the details of individual lives.
History, generally first written by the hand of the victor, deserves a balanced accounting. Everett does this with humor, kindness, and unrelenting honesty in an uncomfortable account of what has been omitted or glossed over. The devil lies in details, and with language that diminishes the speaker as it conforms to the expectations of the entitled. “In ownership of language,” Everett tells us, “there is great power.”
James had to hide the fact that he could read and write. On the plantation where he lived with his wife and daughter, he risked beatings and worse to teach the slave children the language and indispensable life lessons necessary for their survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way, and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them.”
Gravely, he shares “The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say, ‘when they don’t feel superior.” The rules in public included not making eye contact. Letting the whites be the ones who name and know everything. Never speaking first, or with each other in front of whites. Mumbling to be perceived as stupid. The children summarized the lessons, “The better they feel, the safer we are.” James corrected, “Da mo’ betta day feels, da mo’ safer we be.”
Investigating an abandoned steamboat, as Huck looked for gold, James filled his sack with books. Books denied him and every other slave. Books that held the promise of new ideas and understanding, even as they also held the power to see his life end swinging from a sycamore tree. In his dreams and deliriums, after a snake bite and beatings, James has conversations with Voltaire, Rousseau and Locke about slavery and race. About freedom, and what it means. About our voice, and the purpose of surviving.
When he and Huck are separated after their raft is sucked under by the wake of a paddle boat, James finds dry land near a secluded small meadow and spreads the books to dry before falling into an exhausted sleep. He wakes to find four black men seated near him. The oldest is fingering one of the books. He also knew how to read and was father to the youngest man, who held a self-made banjo but was afraid to play for fear of the music drawing attention. Although they were in the free state of Illinois, it would make no difference if a white person wanted to cause trouble.
The men shared news, stories of running, and their scars. James told of the bounty on his head. All knew it was in their best interest to stay clear of the runaway Jim. Declining their offer of food, as the men rose to return to their plantation before “the counting time,” James asked for the one thing he needed: a pencil. Days later, young George returned with the broken stub of a pencil, and an urging for James to write his story.
James stayed for several days more, reading and using the gift. “With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself.”
He needed to move but had no plan. Without Huck, he had no camouflage. The sound of baying hounds prompted him. Again, he traveled at night but this time on land. The Illinois woods were dark and thick, and before he’d gone far, a familiar sound brought James to a thicket where he could see slaves gathered in a large and sad circle, around a white man wielding a long-coiled bullwhip in his hand. Each thunderous stroke of the leather was aimed at a young man tied to a stake; a banjo player whom James recognized, being whipped unconscious for the theft of a stub of pencil.
That pencil, less than three inches long was lost by a white master, lounging on his veranda when a breeze blew his papers across the lawn and landed the pencil in a drift of fallen leaves. At the moment, it was an inconsequential loss, his slaves gathered the papers. Small enough to lie hidden in the depth of his pocket, that scrap of pencil had power for James. It was colored by the blood of someone else’s child and weighted by the need to tell their story. When news of young George later being hanged reached James, both his anger and his resolve grew.
“You know, dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones” referred to a lack of basic maintenance on logging equipment, but James applies the metaphor to other truisms in a slave’s life. Explaining to Huck why grifters and charlatans can be successful: “Folks takes the lies they want and throw away the truth that scares them,” he said. “Belief has nothing to do with truth.”
This wisdom illuminates not just the issues dividing the country in 1885; the same motives threaten us today. Book bans. Incomplete histories. Unprosecuted acts of a multitude. Barriers to knowing the truth.
Everett provides a new and more expansive lens to view our history — to learn from both sides — so that we might understand the cost to individuals and society when we let ourselves ignore those things that scare us.
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