The “Huck Finn” reimagining that took home the 2024 National Book Award
By ELIZABETH BUNT — arts@theaggie.org
It’s a pretty safe bet to say that anyone who attended American high school has at least heard of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Published in 1884, “Huck Finn,” has been a mainstay of American literature since its release and is one of the country’s most widely taught novels. It tells the story of Huckleberry Finn, a teen boy who fakes his death to escape an abusive father and joins up with a runaway slave named Jim. Together they take a raft journey down the Mississippi River.
Percival Everett takes this journey — the details of which are familiar to most American readers — and turns it on its head. As the name suggests, “James” features Jim as the protagonist rather than Huck. In keeping with the source material, Jim is running away because he has heard plans of him being sold. The goal of his journey in both Twain and Everett’s novels is to flee Missouri until he can earn enough money to buy the freedom of his wife and daughter, Sadie and Elizabeth, respectively. In the meantime, Jim has to survive the float south without falling prey to any number of people who would like to do him harm. For Huck, the river voyage is a grand adventure consisting of mostly harmless larks, whereas for Jim the journey is a matter of life and death.
This is a facet of the original story that Everett really focuses on. Scenes that in the original are fun asides for Huck, like the encounter with the Duke and Dauphin, are harrowing for Jim. He must constantly watch his back and adapt his behavior to fit the expectations of white southerners. Everett communicates this necessary paranoia extremely well so that the reader is not spared the anxiety that Jim is forced to live with. The depth with which Everett communicates the danger of Jim’s situation makes his decision to remain with Huck so much more remarkable than in the original.
In “Huckleberry Finn,” Jim acts as a guide and father figure for Huck, but Twain doesn’t dive into Jim’s own mind and autonomy enough to show what a sacrifice this is. Everett places Jim’s humanity at the forefront of the story.
In addition to reimagining the major plot points of “Huck Finn,” Everett makes Jim’s incredible grasp of language and his vivid internal dialogue an important theme in “James.” Early in the novel, there is a scene in which Jim is giving an English lesson to the young children of fellow enslaved persons. Away from white people, Jim and the children speak in perfect, eloquent English, much more correct in fact than the language used by the barely literate Huck.
However, in this lesson, Jim is teaching the children how to change their dialect to make themselves sound gullible and ignorant. He calls this the “slave filter” and gives his students sentences to translate into a broken English that the white owners expect of their slaves. Everett shows Jim’s adeptness with this skill repeatedly over the course of the novel. Jim code switches automatically to fit his speech patterns to his audience’s expectations, speaking normally with other Black slaves but brokenly among white listeners to hide his intelligence. After reading “James,” readers will have a hard time not seeing this deception in Jim’s original “Huck Finn” dialogue.
Retellings of classic literature, especially works of mythology, have become a major trend in the literary scene over the past few years. Some, like “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller, have become hugely popular, spurring even more writers to try their hand at a classic story. Because of this trend, critics and readers have become more wary of books claiming to be innovative reimaginings as many turn out to be nothing more than fluff, not adding anything new to the dialogue around the original literature.
“James” is not one of these books. Everett has added to Twain’s work in writing “James” because he has provided a complementary counterpart to “Huck Finn.” He has not only filled in the gaps left in “Huck Finn” but has finally given Jim the character depth to match, and exceed, Huck. “James” is a testament to Everett’s skill as a writer and his self-declared appreciation for Twain’s work. It is a well-deserving recipient of the National Book Award.
Written by Elizabeth Bunt — arts@theaggie.org
