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Part 2, Chapter 8
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
The engine room shakes, and the bell rings seven times. Brock does not know what this means, but he continues shoveling. Jim tells Norman the man is crazy, and Brock confronts them, demanding to know why a slave would talk to his master that way. Norman admits that he is not white. The boiler screams louder, and a rivet shoots out. Brock looks terrified and curses. The next thing Jim knows, he is waking up in the river. Passengers—alive and dead—float all around him. He calls out for Norman and sees him clinging to a plank in the water. Another voice calls Jim’s name—it is Huck, also treading water. Jim is forced to choose between them.
Perhaps because he is also enslaved, Brock is able to see that Norman and Jim’s relationship is not typical. The explosive result of his fast shoveling is somewhat ironic, suggesting that Brock’s devotion to his task—which was cultivated by his enslavers—essentially backfired and led to disaster. Finding himself forced to choose between saving Huck or Norman, Jim imagines himself in a real-life philosophical conundrum similar to those employed by Voltaire and Locke. Jim knows there can be no just solution to his predicament, and the fact that he still must choose is yet another injustice.
Themes
