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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
Later in the day, Jim and Huck find their own canoe and raft washed up on shore, and they set out on the river, leaving the robbers’ skiff behind. Huck asks Jim what he would choose for a last name, since he doesn’t have one. Jim settles on “Golightly,” calling himself “James” for the first time. They sleep, with Huck on the raft and Jim in the boat. Jim wakes to the sounds of a party on a nearby steamboat, grateful the people cannot see him in the darkness. He realizes the raft has come unhitched, and Huck is gone. Jim calls for the boy, but he also considers that their separation might make his own situation less complicated.
Huck’s line of questioning in this scene indicates he is grappling with the concept of enslavement and its consequences on Jim’s identity. The act of naming himself “James Golightly” restores some of Jim’s lost autonomy. (While “James” both acknowledges his given name and alters it, the choice of “Golightly” is less clear but may reference a character in another novel by Everett: I Am Not Sidney Poitier.) Jim’s relief at no longer having to perform for the vanished Huck draws attention to the way he has become jaded by his experiences.
Themes
Jim spots Huck drifting on the raft and pretends to be asleep. The boy ties the two vessels back together and pretends he has been there all along when Jim wakes, telling him their separation was a dream. Jim acts hurt when Huck reveals this prank—claiming a bit of trickery for himself. Huck asks if he is technically stealing Jim, since Jim is Miss Watson’s property. Irritated, Jim tells Huck he is not a mule, and says the law has nothing to do with good and evil, since the law makes him a slave. Later, Jim tells Huck he can hear the Ohio River telling him to get a job so he can buy Sadie and Lizzie’s freedom.
In pretending to fall for Huck’s prank, Jim himself becomes a prankster. Not only is the pretense part of Jim’s performance of simple-mindedness, but the deception grants him a certain advantage. Once again, Huck’s questions revolve around Jim’s identity, this time as Miss Watson’s “property.” This is the closest Jim comes to condemning slavery in Huck’s presence, and his irritation is rooted in the offensive comparison of himself to livestock. It is unclear whether his comment about freeing Sadie and Lizzie is a return to his performance of hope or an actual hope.
Themes
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