Thinking about Solomon

Jim is “down on Solomon” for threatening to cut a child in two, and this is plainly preparation for our later discovery that Jim cares very much for his own children, and blames himself for having been unintentionally cruel to his daughter.

According to 2 Chronicles, two prostitutes ask Solomon to adjudicate their claim to the same baby. Lacking witnesses, the king resorts to the letter of the law, treats the baby as property, and orders it cut in half. Predictably, the sound heart of the real mother compels her to plead for the child’s life, Solomon finds his credible witness, and justice prevails. When the biblical account is viewed as an allegory about the relationship of justice (what is morally right) and the law (what is legally sanctioned), King Solomon becomes the wise intercessor; the child, a human being treated as property (the condition of the Israelites during much of Solomon’s reign); the fraudulent mother, a diseased conscience potentially abetted by civil law; and the biological mother, a sound heart governed by moral rectitude. Fully recounted, the biblical legend suggests that real justice can be served only when a judicial system is joined to a judicious social conscience.

In Jim’s parody, however, the biblical legend ends with Solomon’s decree to sever the child, which, according to Jim, is “‘de beatenes’ notion in de worl’” (94). A frustrated Huck tells the runaway slave that he has “clean missed the pointblame it, [...] missed it a thousand mile” (95), and he is literally right. But it is Huck, not Jim, who has missed Twain’s point. The deceptively humorous tone of the passage and Jim’s deceptively simplistic reasoning conceal a serious message. Interpreting the passage as merely humorous and Jim’s character as racially stereotyped is contradicted by earlier incidents in the narrative. First, Twain has already established Jim’s humanity and sound judgment on several occasions, and Huck has just confided to his readers that Jim “was right, he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger” (93). Second, Twain’s heavy satire is directed at Huck’s comments, not Jim’s. Jim understands that “the real pint"חthe one Twain wishes to make"is down furderחit’s down deeper. It lays in the way Sollermun was raised” (96). Jim’s sobering insight that “a man dat’s got ‘bout five million chillen runnin’ roun’ de house [...] as soon chop a chile in two as a cat” (96; emphasis in original) calls to mind the plight of millions of enslaved blacks and opens the door to speculation that Twain truncates the biblical story for a profoundly antiracist reason. Jim, I suggest, tells only half the story of King Solomon because that is the only part that his experience allows him to understand. White oppression, not Jim’s foolishness, prevents the runaway slave from imagining that anything approximating justice might prevail in a court of law. For Jim, as powerless before an American judge as the infant is in Solomon’s court, the import of the biblical story understandably ends with the king’s decree. Huck, however, who is white and whom the courts have protected in the past, decides “you can’t learn a nigger to argue” (98), and the two reach an impasse that is never resolved.

Getting the point of Solomon’s story, of course, requires understanding the difference between a human life and a piece of property, a point that Twain metaphorically represents by allowing Jim to equate the value of half a child to the worthless half a dollar bill. In Jim’s parody of Solomon’s case, Jim casts himself as Solomon and uses a dollar bill to represent the child, implying that the value of a human life in his political economy is reducible to dollars and cents. In fact, Jim immediately conflates the child with the dollar. Lacking a real child to play the part, Jim tells Huck, “this yer dollar bill’s de chile” (95). But in Jim’s metadrama, the dollar bill retains its own identity, and Jim describes the logical way to discover who “de bill [...] b’long to,” not the child (95; emphasis added). Trapped in a system whose civil and moral codes fail to distinguish between a human life and a piece of property, Jim asks, “what’s de use er dat half a bill?can’t buy noth’n wid it. En what use is a half a chile? I would’n give a dern for a million un um” (95). Earlier, Jim has defined his own worth in economic terms, telling Huck, “I owns mysef, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money” (57), intuitively understanding but apparently not internalizing the illogic of being considered both a human being and a commodity.

Neither Jim nor Huck really understands the King Solomon passage, which seems to be Twain’s intention because the episode is not a defining moment for either character. Twain’s larger purpose is to encrypt Huck’s story with a parable that his audience most likely does not wish to hear. When the passage is read metanarratively, Jim is not foolish; indeed, he is the wise fool who adjudicates based on the only dispensation he knows and exposes its gross inconsistencies in the process. In a dialogic moment essential to excavating the parable, Jim vigorously defends himself when Huck accuses him of failing to understand King Solomon’s wisdom. “‘Doan talk to me’bout yo’ pints,’” Jim replies; “‘I reck’n I knows sense when I sees it; en day ain’ no sense in sich doin’s as dat’” (95). The parabolic import of the passage resides in the rest of Jim’s statement: “‘De’ spute warn’t’bout a half a chile, de ‘spute was’ bout a whole child, en de man dat think he kin settle a ‘spute’ bout a whole chile wid a half a chile, doan know enough to come in out’n de rain’” (95). Twain overwrites Jim’s parody with the sobering reminder that the dispute over slavery was about freedom and justice, both of which are as surely eviscerated by halfway measures as a child who is literally cut in two.

How the Frenchman talks

The dialogue on why a Frenchman doesn’t talk like a man is much more complicated. In order to understand it we must remember the conventions of the minstrel show, where Mr. Bones, although he seems at first sight to be abysmally ignorant in comparison to Mr. Interlocutor, is actually very clever and usually wins the arguments, just as Jim does. But what is important is not that Mr. Bones wins again; what is important is the terms in which the argument is won. Huck argues that since a cat and a cow “talk” differently, and since it is “natural and right” that they should do so, it is equally “natural and right” for a Frenchman to talk differently from an American. Huck’s unstated assumption is that ethnic difference is founded in nature, and has, therefore, the same magnitude and necessity as difference in species. Jim immediately spots the fallacy. He agrees that there is a basic difference between a cat and a cow, which requires that they “talk” differently. But he asks:

“Is a Frenchman a man?” “Yes,” says Huck. “Well, den! Dad blame it, why `doan’ he talk like a man? You answer me dat!”

Jim recognizes, and Huck does not, that all men share a common humanity. When we remember that this argument has been over differences in human language, when we remember that Twain boasted at the beginning of the book of accurately reproducing seven discrete dialects, and when we remember how thoroughly man is divided from man in the society of the Mississippi Valley, this little dialogue takes on an extraordinary richness of meaning.

But Huck’s only conclusion is that “you can’t learn a nigger to argue.” He does not understand how he has been beaten, since, as Henry Nash Smith has clearly demonstrated, he is incapable of handling abstract ideas. But the careful reader will notice that while Huck is not capable of handling abstract ideas, Jim is. Chapter XIV is clearly minstrel show humor, and the Jim of this chapter is equally clearly Jim as Mr. Bones. But within the framework of minstrel show dialogue Twain has created a cluster of meaning both significant and appropriate.

How much do we know about Jim at the end of Chapter XIV? We know that his character is partially a type-character, the comic stage Negro, but that it extends far beyond the limits of that type. We know that his superstitions are shared by some whites. We know that he is human enough to suffer physical pain. We know that he has a considerable amount of common sense, and that within the rather severe limits of his knowledge he is capable of handling abstract ideas. We know also that the ideas he expressesthat there is a kind of wealth in owning oneself, and that all men share a basic humanityחare most appropriate to his own situation.

Huck, of course, has learned much less than the reader. At the level of conscious thought, which is his weakest point, Huck has learned only that it is bad luck to handle a snake-skin, that Jim has “an uncommon level head for a nigger,” and that in spite of his common sense “you can’t learn a nigger to argue.” But in Chapters XV and XVI Huck is placed in situations where he, as well as the reader, is forced to learn something new about Jim.

Chapter XV is devoted to the justly famous episode in which Huck is separated from Jim in a fog. He gets back to the raft while Jim is asleep, and convinces him that the whole experience was a dream, which Jim proceeds to “interpret.” Then Huck points to the rubbish on the raft, evidence that the experience was real. He asks Jim what it means, and gets ready to laugh. But the laughter does not come. Instead, Jim tells him that “dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes `em ashamed.’” Not the least of Twain’s achievements is his ability to give such dignity and force to Negro dialect (not that Negro dialect in itself is weak or undignified; but literary use of it has generally been both). The Jim of this episode, although he still speaks in the dialect of the stage Negro, is not the stage Negro, but man in the abstract, with all the dignity that belongs to that high concept, and he teaches Huck that it is painful, not funny, to play childish tricks on human dignity. Huck says,

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a niggerbut I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.

“If I’d a knowed.” It is easy to penetrate Huck’s feelings, but it is almost impossible to penetrate his mind. The idea that he hadn’t really known Jim has penetrated, however, and it comes briefly to the surface of Huck’s mind in Chapter XVI, when he wrestles for the first time with his “deformed conscience.” Huck thinks,

Here was this nigger which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his childrenחchildren that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm. [my italics]

The ambiguity is evidence that Huck’s mind has been touched at last. And when Jim calls him “de bes’ `fren’ Jim’s ever had” and “de on’y white genlman dat ever `kep’ his promise to ole Jim,” Huck’s reaction is “I just felt sick.” Huck is not one to overstate his emotions; “sick” is as strong a term as he ever uses for them. He uses it here, and when he watches the Grangerford boys being butchered, and when the King and the Duke are ridden on a rail, and when he sees the farmers sitting with their guns in the Phelps’ parlor. Jim’s appeal to his friendship and his honor, coming immediately after he has betrayed Jim with a stupid trick and is about to betray him again, hits Huck very hard indeed. It makes it impossible for Huck to continue to be totally ignorant of who Jim is, and it makes it possible for him to win this first battle with his conscience.

The Character of Jim and the Ending of `Huckleberry Finn. Chadwick Hansen.
DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003.