The novel Twain did not write

Mark Twain’s 1884 classic, Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, opens with a notice, a warning, if you may: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” 

Percival Everett, 140 years later, does exactly that: finds a motive, a moral and a plot, in Jim, the runaway slave from the original, who happens to travel together with Twain’s protagonist/narrator, Huck. Although the political consequences and social retaliation of such solidarity with Jim’s cause (and turmoil) are not as vile today as they would have been back in Twain’s time, Everett manages to create a stir with how empathetically he addresses the issue.  

Jim, or as Everett re-imagines him, James, owns the story of his escape, as is owed to him. His life is a reflection (and an outcome) of the socio-political reality of his times. In 1860s Missouri, Jim lives two lives — one that is acceptable to his ‘white’ masters, where he is at their mercy, to be treated like a resource; and the other, where he lives independent of the burden of the colour of his skin. In this other life, he secretly reads books, is tempted by philosophy, knows how to spell and write, and teaches proper English to his community. His lessons also include learning how to hide this wisdom to not attract attention and hence, not be perceived as a threat: “Don’t make eye contact”; “Never speak first”; and exercise a “slave filter” by using the “correct incorrect grammar”.

Afraid of being sold and separated from his family, James decides to run away to a nearby island, where he encounters Huck, who is also hiding after having staged his own death back home. It does not take long for Jim to put two and two together: he is now not only a fugitive, which was troublesome as it is but also wanted for the kidnapping and possible murder of Huck. Along the journey, his “lengthening list of crimes” only ascertains his fate; if caught, a concluding punishment awaits him. Set in the years leading up to the Civil War, the story is driven by Huck’s sense of ‘adventure’ and Jim’s aversion to it. It is either slavery or the risk of death that James, and many like him, must embrace.

Although there are definite links that connect Everett’s work with Twain’s classic — he preserves old characters like the Duke and the King, makes a passing reference to the Shepherdsons and Grangerfords feud, and retains the free-flowing use of vernacular English — the author also rebuilds the story by expanding on some of the original ideas as well as introducing newer tangents. 

Judge Thatcher is seen in a new light; James becomes Jim’s alter-ego by acting with a sense of unexpected conviction; religion is exposed as a weapon of subjugation; the Mississippi River has a character of its own; Virginia Minstrels, a band known for their ‘blackface’ performance, makes an appearance in the story; the tragedy of men being treated as horses and women as ‘breeding stock’, is reimagined; philosophical debates on the goodness of a man and the existence of freedom without rights, are seen anew; and something oddly similar to Stockholm Syndrome is recognised, as some slaves become obsessed with their “massa” (southern slang for Master).

Retellings may be a powerful tool to revisit problematic social norms that continue to exist albeit subtly but to reduce James to simply an interpretation of the classic novel would be doing a disservice to Everett’s own creative and fictional prowess. “I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not and also could not have written,” he told the Booker Prize team. While Twain exposes the system as seen from the outside, Everett enables his characters to not only confront the atrocities of the very system but also provides them with tools to fight the injustice and not simply witness it.  

Everett’s narrator hates “the world that wouldn’t let [him] apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice”. Unfortunately, this sentiment is not alien to us today. There is something about the question of race that remains ubiquitous even in modern societies. Discrimination has only changed its form but not its motive and for that reason, books like Mark Twain’s Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett’s James may never cease to reflect prejudices that stay put in societies across the world.

As James finds its rightful place on the 2024 Booker Prize shortlist — Everett’s second time on the list — one must continue to ask difficult questions, expose injustice, and reject inequality, as Jim does, by becoming James.