Character: Jim
Book: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Author: Mark Twain
26 writer: Galen O’Hanlon
Rereading Huck Finn, I see his adventures are just the surface. Beneath, almost out of sight, is Jim’s story – and the great orphaning force of slavery.
Two orphans on a raft, unalike, adrift, asleep.
The river breathes, dreams bubble from the deep.
Jim sobs for his people, his kids, his wife.
Huck frets on the runaway life.
Jim loves Huck as a father might,
And Huck, who has nothing, is rich in white.
Meanwhile, a debt silts the riverbed:
Black blood, Black souls, three centuries of the dead.