"James," Percival Everett - A Review

  

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

James, Percival Everett

May 11, 2024

 

“‘And who are you?’ ‘I am James.’ ‘James what?’ ‘Just James.’”

                                                                                                                James, 2024

                                                                                                                Percival Everett (1956-)

 

Slavery is evil. It is an abomination – the degradation of one human by another. But it has been in existence for most of human existence, and it still exists in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Estimates are that about 50 million people are enslaved today. Prior to the 19^th Century slavery was normal in most parts of the world. 

                                                                

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Just as Huck was the voice in Mark Twain’s 1885 Huckleberry Finn, the enslaved (and runaway) Jim is the voice in Percival Everett’s 2024 novel, James. The setting of both books would be early 1861. Lincoln had been elected. Slavery was on the docket, as was secession. Abolitionists were ascendant in the north. Plantation owners, with their thousands of slaves, dominated politics of the south.

 

Like John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn has been (and is) banned in many schools and libraries, generally because of its racist language. While many words are offensive, they reflect the dialect of the time. A warning: Everett uses similar language. Through his character Huckleberry Finn, Twain explored conflicting values – Huck’s desire to see Jim free versus the fact that, under laws that then existed, he (Jim) was the property of another person, Miss Watson. In the end, Jim’s freedom was more important to Huck. Everett explores the inner tension of a literate man who must endure and conform to what is expected of him as a slave. 

 

Like Twain’s Jim, James is decent and empathetic. Additionally, Mr. Everett has him as well-read (through access to Judge Thatcher’s library), something, as a slave, he must hide from white people. In giving lessons to his daughter Lizzie and other children, he tells them of how “the more you talk of God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.” The children then respond: “And the better they feel, the safer we are.” Jim then asks, “February, translate that:” She responds, “Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.” Jim replies, “Nice.” Whites, Everett infers, need to feel superior to slaves, especially when they are not. 

 

Like the original, when Jim hears that Miss Watson plans to sell him down the river, he tells his wife Sadie and daughter Lizzie that he must leave but will return to get them. For a slave to run away took courage. Free states, like Illinois across the Mississippi River, would often capture and return run-aways. Punishment was lashing or hanging. So Jim first escapes to Jackson’s Island where Huck joins him. Jim had brought with him a bag of books: “Though Huck was asleep, I could not chance his waking and discovering me with my face in an open book. But then I thought, How could he know I was actually reading? I could simply claim to be staring dumbly at the letters…” So he opens the book, and “the smell of the pages was glorious.” “In the country of Westphalia…” – he reads the opening sentence of Voltaire’s Candide. Later, while still on Jackson’s Island, Jim gets bitten by a rattle snake, and in his delirium is visited by Voltaire. He talks to him “about slavery, race and, of all things, albinism.” In another scene, Jim argues with John Locke, father of liberalism who helped write the 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina that justified slavery: “What you’re saying,” Jim retorts, “is that if someone pays you enough, it’s okay to abandon what you have claimed to understand as moral and right.” “When you put it that way,” Locke replies.

 

Percival Everett, an African American professor of English at USC, has given us Jim’s side of Huck’s story.

We meet many of the same characters we know from Huckleberry Finn: Huck, Miss Watson, Aunt Polly, Judge Thatcher, the “Duke,” the “King,” and others. Following Twain’s story, using history, compassion and humor, he offers a worthy companion to Twain’s story, highlighting the indignity and horrors of slavery.