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Part 1, Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in James, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Speech, Performance, and Willful Ignorance
Identity, Narrative, and Agency
Racism, Dehumanization, and Hypocrisy
Innocence vs. Disillusionment
Family, Alliance, and Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
As sunrise approaches, Jim hears angry voices in the woods and hides. Some members of the Grangerford and Shepherdson families are fighting over an engagement, and Jim hears Huck’s voice in the ruckus. He pulls the boy down into his hiding place as four men open fire, killing one another. Huck leads Jim to the river, where he has found and fixed up the remnants of their raft. Despite it being daytime, Jim insists they board the raft to get away from the dead white people. Huck asks why Jim is talking funny, saying he doesn’t sound like a slave. Jim panics, realizing he has been using his normal voice. He switches back to slave diction, but Huck seems suspicious.
The feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons is true to the author’s source material, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Jim’s fear of being discovered with their bodies points to the tendency of white society in this time period to blame Black people for all crimes, regardless of evidence. Though Huck does not share Jim’s worry, his naivety can be read as a product of both his whiteness and his youth. Again, Huck notices the change in Jim’s diction, as he has not needed to use slave talk for some time, since he hasn’t been around white people as much. That Huck is catching on to Jim’s performance suggests the boy is more observant than other white people and that he does not underestimate Jim’s intelligence.
Themes
