Open Prompt Response 9/16

1992. In a novel or play, a confidant (male) or a confidante (female) is a character, often a friend or relative of the hero or heroine, whose role is to be present when the hero or heroine needs a sympathetic listener to confide in. Frequently the result is, as Henry James remarked, that the confidant or confidante can be as much "the reader's friend as the protagonist's." However, the author sometimes uses this character for other purposes as well. Choose a confidant or confidante from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an essay in which you discuss the various ways this character functions in the work. You may write your essay on one of the following novels or plays or on another of comparable quality. Do not write on a poem or short story.

                 

            Characters in novels don’t require confidants – they could just as easily confide in the reader himself, or keep all emotions bottled up. When an author includes a confidant, however, he forces the reader to draw conclusions as a third party hidden from the characters. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim are placed in isolation throughout their adventures, forcing Huck to confide often in his travelling companion. While he’s not the brightest character in the book, especially when juxtaposed against more literate characters, Jim serves as a friend, protector, and a mentor to his young companion. These functions give Jim a greater purpose in the plot than simply a convenient place for Huck to dump his feelings.

             Huck escapes from his drunkard father, Pap, at the beginning of the novel, causing him to be without a father figure. Jim, already knowing the ropes of fatherhood from the family he left behind, steps into the role for Huck. When the two first find the abandoned boathouse with the body inside, Jim doesn’t allow Huck to see the corpse for fear of scarring the child. Jim also provides food for the two of them, and he keeps Huck from knowing of Pap’s death for as long as possible. These actions demonstrate not only Jim’s ability to act as an adult, but also his ability to act in the best interest of a child who is not even his own. Twain often uses Jim to remind the reader that the narrator, Huck, is a child who requires adult supervision.

            One major theme of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn surrounds the meaning and purpose of slavery in society during the nineteenth century. Twain uses Jim to reinforce this theme by giving him a mentorship position for a white child. Because Jim is an escaped slave, Huck battles with whether or not he should turn Jim in. He decides against it, and this allows him to muse over whether slavery is correct or not. As his relationship with Jim grows, Huck sees more wisdom in Jim than he ever saw in his own father. Their relationship is the basis through which Twain shows society that slavery is a serious misjudgment on the part of Caucasians; with Huck interacting so closely with a slave, the social wrongdoings of the time are willingly pointed out from an innocent child’s standpoint. The child has very little bias, he only serves as an observer.

            Mark Twain didn’t write about Huck Finn and his escaped-slave-turned-best-friend Jim to make the reader feel good. He wrote about the two because he knew it would make a social point that he could not make on his own. Jim serves as a literal father figure, protector, and confidant of Huck; but he also serves as an actor, one who can be watched by Huck, to open the eyes of Twain’s contemporaries to the horrors of racism.