An Afropessimist Interpretation of Huckleberry Finn

Abstract

This paper analyzes Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the lens of Afropessimism, a critical theory which characterizes Blackness as being in a perpetual state of ontological death that is linked to slavery in America. The author argues that Twain’s racist ‘anti-racist’ rhetoric is premised upon the third tier of terror of anti-Blackness, white counter-hegemonic thought, which manifests as a gross negrophilia of Black people, both in Huckleberry Finn and in Twain’s personal life. Twain’s forcing of a white narrative structure upon his Black characters in a novel with a clear white value structure precludes any possible investigation of anti-Blackness, only reproducing various forms of anti-Black racism. Ultimately, the paper contends that the survival and use of this white copy of the slave narrative to study racism in America is inherently problematic, and it demonstrates the limitations of the white mind in wholly and accurately articulating Black suffering.