Character Inspiration
The character may have been modeled after one or more slaves, or on the "shrewd, wise, polite, always good-natured ..." formerly enslaved African-American George Griffin, whom Twain employed as a butler, starting around 1879, and treated as a confidant.
The author, Samuel Clemens, grew up in the presence of his parents' and other Hannibal, Missourians' slaves and listened to their stories; an uncle, too, was a slave owner.
Read more about this topic: Jim (Huckleberry Finn)
Famous quotes containing the words character and/or inspiration:
“The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)