Mask and Double-Voice in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Passing of Gran Essay

The usage of the mask and double voice technique can be found in Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and in The Passing of Grandison and The Goophered Grapevine, both by Charles Waddell Chesnutt. While these stories show that slave stereotypes can be used to gain power, nevertheless, the use of double voice still perpetrates stereotypes.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) between 1876 and 1883. It is considered to be both a picaresque novel, meaning that it is an episodic, colorful story often in the form of a quest or journey, and a bildungsroman, a novel of education or moral development (SparkNotes). The journey that Huck (and his slave-friend Jim) ensues is on towards freedom. For Huck, the freedom is from his father and the civilized life the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson is imposing on him. For Jim, the freedom is from the oppression of slavery.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the author uses the mask and double voice technique to show that the old slave, Jim, is in fact, in control of the different situations. Jim can be considered to be in control of the situations because he not only becomes a father figure and friend to Huck, but he is also the only sensible adult in the entire novel. An example of Jims mask and double voice is when he and Huck are separated and he believes he is dead. His mask is that he is a slave and he doesnt really care too much about white people (like most slaves) but the double voice comes into play because deep down inside, Jim really does love Huck, and he cherishes him as a friend and he is overjoyed when Huck wakes him up and says, Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didnt you stir me up? (Twain, Heath Anthology 2nd Ed. 285).

Another author who uses mask and double voice in his writings is Charles Waddell Chesnutt. Chesnutt wrote The Goophered Grapevine, a story about a white visitors encounter with Uncle Julius McAdoo, an old freed slave who tells about the cursed grapevine in a slave dialect. This story was first published in Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1887. It was the first story written by an African American to ever be printed in the magazine. The Goophered Grapevine was reprinted 13 years later as the first story in the book, The Conjure Woman.

Chesnutt exemplifies the use of mask and double voice where Julius is talking to the prospective buyer of the land about the grapevine. He says, Well suh, you is a stranger ter me, en I is a stranger ter you, en we is bofe strangers ter one annuder, but f I uz in yo place, I wouldn buy dis vimyad (Chesnutt, Heath Anthology 129). He then goes on to tell the man that the land is goophered,--cunjud, bewitch (129). This can be considered to be a mask and double voice because while Julius is telling the man about how cursed the land is, he is only telling him this so that he will not want to buy the land, thus enabling Julius to keep it for himself and inhabit it. Unfortunately, the buyer does buy the vineyard but he does not notice any developments of the goopher. What he does notice is that none of the black slaves will eat the grapes during the season.

Another Chesnutt story that uses mask and double voice is The Passing of Grandison, first published in 1899. This is a story of Dick Owens, the son of a slave master and his desire to impress his fiance by setting a slave free. The slave he chooses happens to be the most loyal slave on the plantation, Grandison.

Grandison shows his mask by being the loyal slave. One instance of this is when the elder Owens asks him about his life on the plantation, Grandison replies, Well, I shd jes reckon I is better off, suh, dan dem low-down free niggers, suh! Ef anybody ax em who dey blongs ter, dey has ter say nobody, er ese lie erbout it. Anybody ax me who I blongs ter, I ain got no casion ter be shame ter tell em, no, suh, deed I ain, suh! (Chesnutt, Heath Anthology 138). When Dick takes him to the North and tells him that he is free, Grandison will not go. However, when they return home, Grandison uses his double voice by telling the master that he was kidnapped and beaten by the abolitionists up North and he escaped from them and came back home. While this makes the master happy, Grandison goes further to use his double voice by moving his wife, family, and friends up North to Canada mere weeks later.

The use of double voice in these stories goes to prove that the slave masters are not always smarter than or as smart as their slaves. These slaves have overcome the oppression that was brought upon them by the white society by using their masks and double voices to outsmart them to great lengths.