Book: James
Author: Percival Everett
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 348
Completion Date: 4/26/25
I decided to read “James” because I read about it in a WSJ Book Review. It is basically the book Huckberry Finn, only told from the perspective of Jim, the runaway slave. I found this to be a unique approach.
If you don’t want to hear about any spoilers in this book, you should stop reading now.
I learned the following from this book:
1) Jim is a slave owned by Miss Watson. Huck is a friend of his. Jim will sometimes let Tom Sawyer and Huck play tricks on him – acting as if he is an uneducated, simple black man when in reality he can read, write & speak like a white person – something that many blacks can do but hide from the whites.
2) Jim discovers he is about to be sold. At the same time, Huck’s dad returns and since he normally beats Huck, he decides to run off to an island in the Mississippi River. Huck actually killed a pig and spread blood around the house to make it look like his Pa had killed him. When Jim goes to the island, he discovers that Huck is already there – both of them having run away. After a few days of hiding there, they decide to proceed downriver from Hannibal, MO to Cairo, IL – where the Ohio & Mississippi Rivers meet.
3) Along the way, they find a house floating in the river after a recent flood. They discover a dead body, but only Jim sees who it is (Huck’s dad) and he does not tell Huck.
4) Further down the river, they run into a group of slaves. One of them gets a small pencil for Jim so he can write, but the slave is later whipped & hanged for stealing the pencil.
5) Later on, Jim & Huck meet two con-men. They decide to try to sell Jim since they find out he is a runaway and Huck, as a minor, cannot own Jim. In the process of going to downriver to sell Jim, the two con-men end up striking & harming a slave owned by Mr. Wiley. He said that Jim has to stay for several days to do the work of his slave Easter, since he is unable to work after the beating from the con-men. They, along with Huck, leave for a few days. Later that night, a minstrel group hears Jim singing and buys him from Mr. Wiley to that he can sing tenor in their group (even though Mr Wiley does not have the right to sell him.
6) The minstrel group is a group of white men who put on blackface and do shows all over. One of the “white men” turn out to be a very light colored runaway slave. When a towns person realizes that Jim is probably really black, he runs off. When he wakes up, Norman is there as well. They decide that since Norman looks white, he should sell Jim. Jim would then run off after one day and they could do it all over again until they had enough money to buy back Norman’s wife and Jim’s wife & daughter from slavery. Mr Henderson runs a sawmill and buys Jim, but whips him hard the first day. Jim runs off with a 15-year-old girl and they meet Norman. The slavecatchers and dogs are not far behind them, so they hurredly build a raft to cross the river. In the process, the girl is shot dead. Later, Norman & JIm steal a rowboat to cross the river.
7) While crossing the river, they are run down by a riverboat, but they miraculously climb onto the boat before the paddles destroy their small boat. They hide in the engine room. The slave shoveling coal into the boiler is encouraged to pick up the pace and the boiler explodes, destroying the riverboat and killing lots of people. Jim is spared and he sees both Huck and Norman struggling to swim. He can only save one and he chooses to save Huck.
8) Huck & Jim are again working their way north by foot. On the way, they see a group of Union soldiers marching south as it appears as if the Civil War has begun. Earlier in the book, Huck asked Jim if he knew his mother and if he could tell him what she was like. Jim refused to answer if she was beautiful because Negros could not comment on a white woman’s beauty, but he did indicate that she was a good person. On their way up-river, Huck asked why Jim saved him and not Norman. Jim then tells Huck that he is Huck’s father and Huck realizes that one of the reasons his father probably beat him was because he was not his natural-born son. Jim then tells Huck that the dead body in the house was his Pa.
9) When they get back to Hannibal, everyone realizes that Huck is alive and was not killed by his Pa. Soon after, Jim learns that his wife Sadie & Lizzie have been sold. He kidnaps Judge Thatcher (who organized the sale for Miss Watson) and gets him to tell him where they are located. He leaves the judge tied to a tree and proceeds to Elida, MO to save his wife & daughter. He starts the corn field on fire to get people moving, finds his family and starts to escape. He is accosted by the slave owner and Jim shoots him dead.
10) Jim & his family find their way to Iowa. People ask all of their names and specifically ask Jim if he is the runaway known as Jim. He replies that his name is James, which is the end of the book.
What I learned from this book that can help increase my prospects for success after prison:
1) There are always two different viewpoints of a story. Everyone is familiar with the story of Huck Finn. Reading it again from the perspective of Jim makes it interesting & thought provoking. I think it might have worked best if first one reads Huck Finn & then reads James immediately after for a better comparison. I read Huck Finn probably 30+ years ago, so some of the details have been forgotten. Still, seeing everything from Jim’s perspective as a runaway slave makes you realize the predicament he was in, especially as a friend of Huck’s.
2) The ease at which slaves could be sold was extraordinary. There was no title, registration or anything attached to the bill of sale – just a sentence or two describing the slave and then the invoice showing how much money traded hands for the transaction. The only way this helps me after prison is to learn how things were from a historical perspective.
