Toni Morrison and Huckleberry Finn.

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination was a complicated read for me; however, after a bit of thinking and some class discussion, I found that Toni Morrison made some very meaningful points.

Morrison main focus in her book is race and its role literature. After I read Huck Finn and Playing in the Dark, ( a novel that Morrison mentions in her book) I looked at Twain's classic in a different way. Morrison stated in her book that "Race, in fact, now functions as a metaphor so necessary to the construction of Americanness that it rivals the old psuedo-scientific and class-informed racisms whose dynamics we are more used to deciphering." She also states that " America means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen."

The African-American, who is one of the major characters, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is named Jim. Morrison stated that race is used as a metaphor today; however, I think that Twain used Jim as a metaphor too. I think that Jim is the American dream in a way. I think Twain used a African-American as the metaphor because he wanted to declare something. I believe that Twain was aware of how "America means white" in most peoples' minds. Twain made a powerful stand by making the "white" dream in a non-white race. Jim is constantly trying to overcome his struggles: to find his place of freedom. Twain has been criticized for using Jim as a stereotype, but I think those critics are missing the big picture. Twain really used race in a powerful meaningful way in his novel. A very clever way as well. I believe that Twain used Jim as a metaphor: Jim is the American dream.