James: A Novel

James is a 2024 novel by African American author Percival Everett. It is a retelling of Mark Twain’s canonical novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) from the perspective of Jim, an enslaved man who is one of the principal characters in Twain’s text. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a continuation of many of the characters and plotlines in Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), although Huck Finn, like James, is more serious in tone and wrestles with themes related to morality, the nature of freedom, and enslavement. James, too, delves deeply into The Brutality of Enslavement and Huck’s moral development. Additionally, it foregrounds the resilience, intellectual acumen, and humanity of enslaved people and reexamines both history and literary history through the lens of contemporary discourses on Black experiences in the United States. It shares with many of Everett’s other texts an interest in race, racial identity, history, and interracial relations in the United States.

This guide refers to the 2024 hardcover edition by Doubleday.

Content Warning: The source text contains racism, racial slurs including the n-word, depictions of sexual assault, anti-Black violence, and enslavement. This guide contains discussions of sexual assault, abuse, racism, and enslavement.

Plot Summary

James begins in the town of Hannibal, Missouri. Jim, an enslaved man, is waiting at the home of Miss Watson for a plate of cornbread to bring back to his wife, Lizzie, and daughter, Sadie. During this first scene, it becomes apparent that the enslaved people speak erudite, standard English among themselves but code-switch into dialect around their enslavers, conscious that white people view them as inferior and would be puzzled to hear them use grammatically correct English. While Jim is waiting, the young Huck Finn stops by. Although a racial divide separates the two, Jim has a soft spot for the boy, whose abusive father regularly subjects him to beatings.

Jim finds out that Miss Watson intends to sell him. Without a clear plan but knowing that he must flee, he absconds to a nearby island in the river. He plans to hide there until he figures out what his next steps will be. He does not want to go north without his family. While he is hiding, Huck appears, having fled yet another of his father’s brutal acts of violence. It soon becomes clear that the townspeople are looking for Huck, and Jim speculates that he will be blamed for the boy’s disappearance, so he sends Huck back into town dressed in some girls’ clothes that the two found. Huck reports back that Jim is indeed a wanted man, and that Huck’s father has also disappeared. Jim and Huck realize that they must flee, so they set out on the river together, heading south to throw off their pursuers, who wouldn’t expect a self-emancipated person to travel away from a free state. They encounter multiple groups of people despite traveling only at night. Huck lies to a group of white men, claiming that Jim, who is hidden under a tarp, is his smallpox-infected uncle, and the men nervously let them go. They run into a group of enslaved men who advise them to flee the area. Before they leave, one of the men manages to steal Jim a pencil, and he begins to write his life story to better understand it.

Next, they run into a pair of confidence men (conmen) who claim to be the rightful king of France and an English duke. Although they don’t trust the men, they cannot shake them. The Duke and the King take over a tent revival and manage to swindle the congregants out of a hefty sum of money before the crowd grows suspicious. The four are forced to flee with the townspeople in pursuit. Jim and Huck want to reverse course and head north alone. However, the Duke and the King have figured out that Jim is a fugitive from slavery and hatch a scheme to sell him, then sell him again once he escapes.

The King and the Duke stop off for some whiskey and leave Jim chained up in a local blacksmith’s shop. When they return to find him unchained, they beat the enslaved man in charge of Jim’s shackles. That man’s enslaver returns, interrupts the beating, and informs the Duke and the King that he intends to keep Jim to work while the other enslaved man recovers from his injuries. The Duke and the King leave with Huck in tow. Jim meets the head of a traveling minstrel show named Emmett, who “hires” Jim to be a tenor in a troupe of men who perform in blackface. Although Emmett purports to not be prejudiced, it becomes clear that he does intend to exploit Jim, and Jim flees in the company of Norman, another enslaved man who has been passing as white in the troupe. To raise funds, the two decide to try out the Duke and the King’s scheme of selling Jim, and although Jim does manage to escape, the experience is harrowing and traumatic, and Jim emerges badly beaten.

Through a series of coincidences culminating in the sinking of a riverboat, Norman dies and Jim is reunited with Huck. Jim reveals himself to be Huck’s true father and expresses his desire that Huck return to the safety of Hannibal, where he can be taken care of by Miss Watson and Judge Thatcher. Huck is flabbergasted that his mother had an affair with a Black man and does not want to be separated from Jim. The two return to Hannibal and Huck asks around about Jim’s status as a wanted man. He learns that Jim is wanted and that a sizeable party has been searching for him. He also finds out that Jim’s family has been sold. Jim steals into Judge Thatcher’s study in search of a bill of sale for his wife and daughter and is interrupted by Judge Thatcher. Jim forces him to reveal the location of his wife and daughter and sets off to recover the two. He sets fire to one of the area fields, enabling him, his family, and other enslaved people to escape. He and his family make it north to safety. Although they are still subject to racism and treated with suspicion in Iowa, where they settle, they are free.