How does language contribute to the total effect of Huckleberry Finn?
over slavery (most notably in ch. 3 I), for detailed description, for parody and for
satire.
LANGUAGE AND POWER –
Language has often been used to exert power over others. There are two examples of this in Huckleberry Finn. The first example of the use of language as a tool of power relates to the attempt of the frauds to manipulate people through the tall tales they tell. Conmen both, this manipulation takes two forms. First soon after their rescue by Huck and Jim from the howling mob, they lay claim through the fake titles to power and status associated with them by appropriating the discourse of the nobility. The switch from one discourse to the other is clear when the two are juxtaposed:
Well, [says the duke] I’d been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth – and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it – but I staid about one night longer than I ought to . . . (19:143).
Yes, My great-grandfather, elderson of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time . . . and here am I, forlorn, tom from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft! (19145)
The parodic appropriation produces the desired effect (“Jim pitied him ever so much, and ,$o did I”) and though Huck recognizes them for what they are, both agree to wait upon them as though they were royalty.
USE OF RACIST LANGUAGE
Mark Twain has been accused of using racist language in Huckleberry Finn. According to one count he has used the degrading word nigger as many as 211 times in the course of the book. The accusation against the writer seems to stick because of Huck’s frequent and apparently unthinking use of it.
Significantly Huck uses the term not only in the beginning, before he has learnt to
