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:
“Sometimes apparent resemblances of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)