Critical Lens Close Reading

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.  Why, looky here.  There was a free n-gger there, from Ohio; a mulatter, most as white as a white man.  He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane - the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.  And what do you think? they said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything.  And that ain’t the wust.  They said he could vote, when he was at home.  Well, that let me out.  Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?”

During one of his drunken tirades, Huck’s father turns his attention to politics and the state of the government.  At the time of the book in 1845, the treatment of blacks was drastically different depending on if you were in a northern or southern state.  Pap, being a traditional white southerner is outraged to see a black man in a position of relative power.  Twain’s characterization of Huck’s father is especially telling of the massive contrast in how blacks were treated at the time.  Specifically, Pap calls the man “white as a white man” when describing his fine clothes and education.  By describing the man’s tokens of success as white, Huck’s father makes the important implication that success is an exclusively white trait.  Huck’s father also pays specific attention to the black man’s level of education, appalled that he is a “p’fessor in a college” and able to “talk all kinds of languages.”  Part of Pap’s reaction clearly stems from his own complete lack of education and consequent need to cling to feelings of superiority.  Although Huck’s father is a fictional character created by Mark Twain, the attitudes that he represents strongly correspond to attitudes in the south during the period of history in which the book was set.  As black people in the north continually gained more rights, white southerners felt increasingly resentful.