Notes

During the time when Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn , the dream of freedom, justice and racial
equality in America was rapidly souring. Toni Morrison wrote that the “evasion” section at the end
of the Huckleberry Finn was Mark Twain’s satirical commentary on this period of history, when “the
nation, as well as Tom Sawyer, was deferring Jim’s freedom in agonizing play.”
“When the Civil War ended, there was no end to the possibilities of what America could
be – suddenly uni"ed, suddenly with an emancipated labor force, "lled with energy and
freedom.
But then there was a push back from that sudden emancipation, from freedom, and
good will. And America had a problem: how do we, as a country, deal with the fact
of what we’ve been versus what we want to become? That’s when a lot of the racial
tensions that we still experience today began to foment. After emancipation, the way (76, p.g)
people had treated slaves had to changed. But they couldn’t – it was too entrenched.
There was a systemic intolerance. People were trying to "gure out how to move on. At
the time they found no easy solutions. And these issues are still pertinent today. So
many things about the world have changed, but that central issue has not. We’re still
dealing with our shared history, and that’s what this production explores.”
this novel the r s are the story that