Sollermun Criticism

Upon first reading the King Sollermun section in the book I did not really understand the point that Twain was trying to make. After reading the criticism by Sloan I have a much different interpretation. I now agree with Sloan that "Huck, not Jim, who has missed the point" (Sloan 3). When Huck and Jim argue over the purpose of the parable the reader is not presented with Huck's point, only that he thinks he is right because the widow told him so. I agree with Roxanne that the Sollermun parable is an allegory to the effect that the slaves (or Jim) are the babies and the mothers are whites or the government. I am not really sure how to interpret this scene because it has so many important things playing into it. I also agree with Sloan that " Twain truncates the biblical story for a profoundly antiracist reason" (Sloan 3). After reviewing this piece multiple times I have come up with a slightly different interpretation of what Twain's purpose was in writing this part. I think that Twain is trying firstly to show his postbellum audience a person from the south that has overcome his prejudices in a antebellum setting. Furthermore I think that the rights of African Americans are represented by the baby that are being cut in half because they are met halfway. In postbellum society blacks had all of the same equalities and personal liberties of white people, but this was only on paper. In real life there were violent groups such as the K.K.K. and threat to keep black southerners away from the voting poles. I completely agree with Sloan that it is " White oppression, not Jim's foolishness, prevents the runaway slave from imagining that anything approximating justice might prevail in a court of law" (Sloan 3). This leads to Sloan's point that Huck cannot understand Jim's reasoning and says that "you've missed the point -blame it, you've missed it a thousand mile" (Twain 78) because Huck has grown up in white society, where people are protected by the laws of the land and people are civilized. Jim does not has the fortune of being raised in that kind of a society and this is why Jim interprets Sollermun in such a way. Jim even states that "It lays in de way Sollermun was raised" (Twain 78). Twain's point concerning the halfway attitude of the postbellum society comes up even earlier when Jim says to Huck, "Now I ast you: what's de use er dat half a bill?-can't buy noth'n wid it" (Twain 77). I think that here Twain is displaying his antiracist persona through Jim. Twain is stating that what use is freedom or right if you can't do anything with them. Blacks had citizenship and they had the right to vote, but they couldn't ever exercise those "Dollars" because of the racist whites in the south. Lastly I think that Sloan's ending paragraph sums up my interpretation of this criticism. " The Civil War,, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments may have legally declared the freedom of blacks, but increased lynchings, the crop-lien system, the convict-lease system, and the nascent Jim Crow laws had revealed a moral code deeply at odds with mandated justice" (Sloan 5). The half story, the half dollar and the half child all point to Twain's underlying purpose of presenting a story about a free slave to a postbellum society that does not want to hear about it.