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Jei Doe
English 542
American Literature
December 10, 2013
Going to the Source: Biblical Authority Turned against Racism in
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and “Down by the Riverside”
Writing decades apart, Mark Twain and Richard Wright nonetheless dealt with the same
problem: how to undermine racism. Both writers responded to this problem by turning to realism
in their respective works The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and “Down by the Riverside.” In
the process, Twain and Wright targeted the religious authority society often used to justify
racism. They argued that organized religion perpetuates absolutism and escapism, tendencies that
either reinforce racist conclusions or problematically ignore them. Both writers were concerned
that religion was an ineffectual response to racism, yet, steeped as they had been in the biblical
tradition, they also recognized the potential power to be gathered from religion if the old
narratives supporting racism could be overturned. Twain and Wright thus incorporated biblical
allusion into their respective works if only to undermine the religious foundations for racism.
Throughout Huckleberry Finn, Twain implicates religion in the absolutist reasoning that
legitimizes racism. Not only does Christianity fail to correct racist assumptions in Huckleberry
Finn, it also supplies the black-and-white dichotomies used to justify racism. Miss Watson
illustrates this tendency in Christianity when she defines moral behavior in absolute terms. Huck
shouldn’t smoke because it is “a mean practice” and isn’t “clean” (2). Huck shouldn’t “gap and
stretch” because he will go to the “bad place” instead of the “good place” with its harps and
singing (3). She sees no intermediate between mean and nice, clean and dirty, good and bad.
Such simplistic judgments lend themselves to racism, which depends primarily on the belief that
white is superior to black. For Huck, this reasoning proves difficult to reject. Even when he
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determines that Miss Watson is treating Jim unethically, he cannot escape her absolutist logic.
He imagines that if he returns Jim to slavery, he will be “all washed clean of sin,” and when he
refuses to betray Jim, he believes he is choosing to go to hell (282-283). In Huck’s mind, religion
has legitimized slavery, as he shows when he says he will have to “steal Jim out of slavery”
(283). Huck truly believes in society’s rules, or a revised form of the Ten Commandments, which
states that black people, like oxen and donkeys, should never be taken from their white owners.
The only way to oppose this system is to break the rules themselves—in this case, the eighth
commandment against theft. Ultimately Huck tries to free Jim, but even then he cannot stop
imagining himself within Miss Watson’s moral framework. As she would, he identifies himself
with evil so that his decision to help Jim amounts not to a redefinition of morality, but to an
acceptance of Miss Watson’s judgments. Huck chooses to set Jim free because of their
friendship, not because of religious reasoning. For Twain, then, experience proves far more
useful than religion in undermining racism.
Similarly to Twain, Wright draws connections between religious absolutes and racist
judgments in “Down by the Riverside.” Wright illustrates the problem of absolutism by setting
his narrative within the black-and-white moral framework Miss Watson prefers. He indicates the
inflexibility of racist judgments by describing many of his characters as either black or white.
For example, Mr. Heartfield is the “white man” wearing a “white shirt” who recognizes his boat
because “Its white!” (79-80), and Mann’s family and friends are “black faces” that “blur” and
“merge,” “one into the other” (117). Representing racism itself, Heartfield’s whiteness and the
community’s blackness mask deeper traits, leaving visible only the most superficial qualities—
skin color and outer clothing. Such superficiality is bound to create misunderstandings between
characters, as it does when Heartfield shoots at Mann because he believes Mann stole his boat
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for trivial purposes. Like Huck Finn’s guardians, Heartfield assumes that white people are
inherently good and black people inherently evil. Wright’s color-conscious narrative thus
demonstrates the reality of racial tensions as well as the impossibility of resolving them using
absolute moral judgments.
For Twain, like Wright, conventional Christian reasoning is problematic both because it
legitimizes slavery and because it ignores it. Huck illustrates the latter problem when he
observes, “By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off
for bed” (4). Huck—and the others in his household—seems oblivious to the problem of
“fetching” people as though they are animals and then praying over them as if to consecrate their
enslavement. He pairs slavery with comfortable, everyday activities like prayer and sleep,
implying that it, too, is an acceptable social convention. Prayers and accompanying Christian
dogma do not inspire him to confront slavery, but allow him to accept it.
Much as religious doctrine fails to turn Huck against slavery, the original pastoral, Eden,
distracts from the problem of racism in Huckleberry Finn. On the island and the raft, Huck and
Jim live as if in paradise, even though Jim is the slave and Huck the master. Both act as if they
are equals, friends in a peaceful, calm, and sinless world. In his essay on the “submerged”
biblical allusions in Huckleberry Finn, Robert Sattelmeyer argues that the river scenes recall the
“twin and parallel biblical myths of Creation and Flood…the stories of beginning and beginning
again, and the promises of creation from nothing and of the preservation of an island of goodness
in a wicked world” (355, 358). It is easy for Huck to settle into this ideal place, where Miss
Watson’s hypocrisy and racism itself seem irrelevant. Harmony, it seems, has been “created from
nothing.” Even as Huck gathers a sense of Jim’s problems, he is able to dismiss them in his
enthusiasm for his own freedom and the river’s natural beauty. On the river, Huck imagines he
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has found a place where he and Jim can interact as equals. As he says, “It was kind of solemn,
drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever
feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle”
(Twain 87). Huck equates his experience with Jim’s, repeating “we” to indicate that they are
united in feeling and action. Their differences appear insignificant compared to the universe at
large, beneath the stars. Huck has forgotten that Jim’s problems are still very real, and Twain
permits the lapse, reverting from Realist to Romantic description. Like Huck, Twain seems
relieved to leave behind “noisy” social problems like poverty and slavery as he returns to the
Romantic longing for the still solemnity of nature. Despite his commitment to realism, Twain
problematically idealizes nature, allowing the story of paradise to distract him from a devastating
and pointed attack on racism. His distraction serves as a figure for society’s desire to avoid the
problem of racism, which—even on the river—remains below the surface. For example, in the
chapter entitled “A General Good Time,” in which Jim and Huck debate harems and Frenchmen,
Jim seems comfortable enough with Huck to describe his true feelings, but he never forgets the
precariousness of his situation. When Huck says, “S’pose a man was to come to you and say
Polly-voo-franzy – what would you think?” Jim impulsively responds, “I’d take en bust him over
de head,” before adding, “Dat is, if he warn’t white” (106). Initially, Jim answers Huck’s
question as if race were meaningless, but he immediately qualifies his first statement. Only if the
French speaker were black could Jim respond aggressively. A white person could speak
nonsense, and Jim would have to feign understanding. That Jim would make this confession both
demonstrates his comfort with Huck and reveals his continued awareness of racial tensions.
Huck is white, and Jim must speak carefully if he wishes to survive. He knows that the journey
down the river cannot last forever. In his criticism of Huckleberry Finn, Andrew Silver identifies
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other buried racial tensions in the Frenchmen scene, arguing that Twain falls into minstrel
stereotyping when he allows Jim to express confidence, only to appear foolish to his readers
because of his arrogance and exaggerated emotion. Thus, Jim brags that he will knock any
French speaker down, but, foolishly, he must retract his own claim. Silver argues that Huck and
Jim appear as equals only because Twain is mocking “not only Jim’s ignorance but Huck’s failed
attempt at white sophistication” (110). Huck does not represent “official white culture” but “a
black dandy straining to achieve whiteness,” so that any authority Jim gains over Huck during
the argument will be irrelevant when he returns to true white society (110). The peaceful river
scene simply puts a playful veneer on the unresolved stereotypes that remain. Huck and Jim’s
conversations on the river thus suggest the suppressive effect of biblical narratives like the Eden
and pastoral story, which disregard real racial tensions.
Wright mounts a similar, though perhaps more direct, critique of religion’s escapist
tendencies. His Christian characters strive to transcend their problems, but they never resolve
them. For instance, while Mann worries about his wife’s health and his family’s safety, Elder
Murray begins a lengthy, distracting prayer. The elder’s words have no bearing on Mann’s
immediate predicament. As the narrator notes, “[Mann] wished with all his heart that Elder
Murray would hurry up and get through with the prayer, for he wanted to be in that boat….”
(72). Instead Murray wastes time, making abstract requests like, “Purify their hearts! Fer Yuh
said, Lawd, only clean hearts kin come t Yuh fer mercy…” (72). Then, ignoring the real
problems around him, he heads for safety in the hills while Mann faces the flood alone.
Throughout his journey, Mann repeats the elder’s words, which temporarily allow him to repress
his frustration over racism. However, the words themselves prevent him from fully articulating
the problem of racism, even to himself. Religious language makes his thoughts less precise and
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more circular, as seen in one of his conclusions on the river: “Yes, he would have to tell the truth
and trust God. Nobody but God could see him through this…. Lawd, have mercy! He lowered
his chin and determined not to think. He would have to trust God and keep on and go through
with it, that was all” (83). Here, Wright equates religious thought to not thinking at all. Religion
only allows Mann to accept death submissively, fatalistically. It also represses his anger and
stifles his every active response to racism. Its repressive effect is visible in Mann’s sudden
emotional outburst at the Heartfields. Then he nearly murders the family when “he [sees] it all in
a flash while staring at the white boy and hearing him scream, ‘It’s the nigger!’” (110). Religion
gives Mann no such emotional release, instead consigning him to a passive acceptance of earthly
problems while waiting patiently for heavenly rewards.
Wright further indicts religion by showing that it is not only repressive but also
ineffectual. Although Elder Murray and Mann repeatedly request God’s mercy, Mann never
receives it, as both he and his wife ultimately die. Elder Murray provides one possible, though
clearly inadequate, reason for God’s unresponsiveness: “only clean hearts kin come t [God] fer
mercy” (72). Wright dismisses the elder’s suggestion that Mann is too impure to receive God’s
help and instead demonstrates Mann’s purity. Mann behaves as ethically as he possibly could,
caring for his wife, refusing to steal, and working on the levy (62-68). If his heart is unclean, it is
with just anger over white behavior. Thus, God remains an inexplicable absence in Mann’s life.
At best, God is a distant hope who keeps Mann calm and passive up to the moment of his death,
relieving his suffering by denying him life. At worst, God is a white construct who upholds racist
prejudice. Ultimately, Mann’s faith does nothing to help him escape racial subservience when he
determines the manner and time of his death. In fact, religious language paralyzes him; he speaks
it while lying “on his face” on the ground (122). Still more troubling, it seems to encourage his
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perception of white superiority, when he equates “white folks” with “God” in his repetitive plea:
“White folks, have mercy!” and “Gawd have mercy!” (120, 122). It is not God but a desire for
liberty that compels Mann to act. He sees boats, “white boats, free boats, leaping and jumping
like fish,” and soon thereafter, he chooses to run (122-123). The boats represent the freedom
whites have, freedom that allows them to enslave others. This unconscious observation triggers
Mann’s frustrations, allowing him to break away from his executioners. He finds a response to
racism in a repressed, but very real, need for freedom, not in religion.
Although Twain and Wright agree that religion problematically tends toward absolutism
and escapism, both also use religion productively to challenge racism. In Huckleberry Finn
Twain soon reveals his skepticism for textual authority like the Bible’s but he also recognizes the
usefulness of a book like his own that can appropriate religious authority for its own purpose.
Huck may argue that the Bible is impractical, having no bearing on real problems. He may insist,
“I don’t take no stock in dead people” and wonder about Miss Watson’s devotion to someone
like Christ who is “no use to anybody,” but he is too much a part of society to fully reject its
sense of moral authority. Despite his growing friendship with Jim, he still thinks of slavery in
terms of the heaven-hell dichotomy codified in the Bible. Twain recognizes in Huck’s insistent
attachment to biblical tradition a larger societal problem and thus sets out to use the biblical
tradition in Huckleberry Finn, but in this case, against racism. Jim illustrates this point in his
harem-Frenchmen comments when he rejects white domination by reinterpreting Solomon’s
story. Unlike the biblical writer, Jim contends that Solomon was not wise because wise men
would avoid the “blimblammin” of a polygamous household, and they would preserve their
children’s lives (104-105). Because Solomon did not meet these practical criteria, he was foolish.
Jim boldly insists on his personal interpretation of a text long monopolized by white readers. He
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flatly rejects Huck’s interpretation of Solomon’s story, saying, “Blame de pint! I reck’n I knows
what I knows. En mine you, de real pint is down furder—it’s down deeper.” He continues by
contradicting not only Huck’s interpretation, but also the Widow Douglas’s as he contends, “I
doan’ k’yer what de widder say” (104-105). Jim rejects those superficial “points” supplied by
white people and the biblical writer himself, who have no understanding of his personal
experiences. Like Huck, he insists on his ability to draw his own conclusions from his own
experiences. In the process, he not only shows his mastery over Huck’s brand of experiential
moral argument, he also demonstrates his control over the Bible itself, the text used by society to
relegate him to slavery. By supplying his own reading of a text co-opted by white society, he
rejects racial subservience.
Like Twain, Wright recognizes the power of biblical narratives in contriving an
emotional reaction against racism. In Black Boy, he describes his initial realization that religious
imagery could, indeed, be compelling. The discovery came when, as a child, he heard sermons
that were
clogged with images of vast lakes of eternal fire, of seas vanishing, of valleys of dry
bones, of the sun burning to ashes, of the moon turning to blood, of stars falling to the
earth, of a wooden staff being transformed into a serpent, of voices speaking out of
clouds, of men walking upon water, of God riding whirlwinds,…a cosmic tale that began
before time and ended with the clouds of the sky rolling away at the Second Coming of
Christ…” (102).
Each image was calculated to shock with its awesomeness. Wright resented the manipulative
quality of the imagery, but he also recognized that religious images could be re-channeled to
evoke anger or fear about racism so that readers would be compelled to seek change.
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Knowing the power of religious imagery, Wright proceeded in “Down by the Riverside”
to subvert common biblical and racist premises, such as white/light are good and black/darkness
are evil. As Mann attempts to find help for his wife or travel from darkness to light, he soon
finds that white is generally evil and black, good. At first, however, Mann equates blackness
with danger. He rows through the “pitch black,” which “glisten[s] blackly like an ocean of
bubbling oil” (70, 74). All the while he is seeking safety, or those “square yellow lights framed
in the darkness” (78). Initially, the boiling water seems ominous and far less appealing than the
geometrically ordered windows of light. But, ultimately, the barbarous natural elements, though
dark, are preferable to civilized society. Mann finds little more than hatred and violence in the
city. The Heartfields shoot at him and curse him. His wife dies on a “white, marble-topped
table,” where her black arm “hang[s] limp” (87-88, 95). When blackness is “framed” in light—
when it is forced into the structures of white society—it ceases to exist, like Lulu. Wright thus
turns the black/white dichotomy around to show that goodness, or the black community, is being
destroyed by evil, or white society.
By subverting religious symbols that, for slaves in particular, suggest deliverance and
hope, Wright is also able to show the ineffectiveness of the Christian tradition in combating
racism. Throughout “Down by the Riverside,” he overturns the expectations of deliverance
associated with each biblical allusion. Mann and his pregnant wife, recalling Joseph and Mary,
move from door to door, requesting shelter, but instead they are shunned until Mann’s wife and
child die. In the hills—the place of safety for the Psalmist—Mann is accosted and sentenced to
death by white soldiers. Beside the river—which represents the Israelites’ last barrier before
crossing into the Promised Land—Mann dies. Wright focuses on the river in particular. It is the
subject of a black spiritual sung by Mann and his family before their departure. “Down by the
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riverside,” they sing, “Ah ain gonna study war no mo” (73). Ironically, Mann no longer “studies
war” beside the river because he dies by the river. The lyrics are also troubling because they call
for passivity, leaving Mann with no desirable choices at the riverside. Even when he refuses to
approach the water subserviently, swearing, “Ahll die fo they kill me!” (123), he merely chooses
to die instead of accepting death. However the song is interpreted, the conclusion is fatal: there is
no deliverance to a new land. Mann begins his journey on the river and circles back to die beside
the river. The biblical narrative about deliverance does nothing to help him escape the disaster
predetermined by his racist world. Mann finds that there is no way of moving from doom to
deliverance in societies controlled by racism.
Although Twain and Wright both show the difficulty of escaping racism, in doing so,
they urge readers to attempt it. Twain provides every reason for readers to feel frustrated about
Huck’s absolutist and escapist responses to racism. If this frustration is not enough to compel
them to act, Twain also forces them to face their own racist assumptions when he allows a black
man to assume authority over white religious traditions. Similarly, Wright uses the connotations
of familiar religious imagery to undermine white conventions and to deny readers cathartic relief.
Huckleberry Finn and “Down by the Riverside” are thus based on the hope that readers would
find emotional release only in taking some positive action against racism.
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Works Cited
Sattelmeyer, Robert. “‘Interesting, but Tough’: Huckleberry Finn and the Problem of Tradition.”
One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn: The Boy, His Book, and American Culture.
Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1985.
Silver, Andrew. “Was Jim White?: Navigating Racial Discourse in Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.” Minstrelsy and Murder: The Crisis of Southern Humor, 1835-1925. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1884. New York: Puffin Books, 1994.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. 1945. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.
Wright, Richard. “Down by the Riverside.” Uncle Tom’s Children. 1938. San Francisco: Harper
Perennial, 2004.