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Week 8 Discussion

Hi All!

I’m curious what you think of the character “Injun” Joe in Tom Sawyer. Twain based the character on a real person he had known growing up in Hannibal, Missouri, Joe Douglas. The real Joe was an Osage Indian and was not at all “murderous,” as depicted in the book. Indeed, he objected to Twain about the characterization, as have later members of the Osage Nation, including the poet Carter Revard, whose native name Nom-peh-wah-the means “fear-inspiring.” He finds the characterization deeply offensive, including the word associated with Joe, “Injun.” I think what bothers Nom-peh-wah-the even more is the idea that no one seems bothered by this. The title he gave an article on the subject clearly suggests this: “Why Mark Twain Killed Injun Joe, and Why Nobody Cares.”

At the same time, it seems to me that Tom’s reaction when he sees the dead Joe in the cave is very important. It suggests some level of empathy on Tom’s part, and presumably on Twain’s.

So . . . what do you think of the characterization of Joe throughout, and does the way Tom reacts to his death suggest any positive view of Joe, either in terms of other characters or on Twain’s part. To put it another way, does anyone care that Joe died the way he did?

As always, feel free to range around a bit with the question and treat each other with kindness. Thanks! Best, jbf

Other people response:

Injun Joe was negatively characterized throughout the whole book. Twain continuously portrayed him as a blood thirsty monster who not only killed the doctor, but killed five people in the village. Twain says, “Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the village. but what of that?” One thing that caught my attention was how Twain talked about how if Injun Joe hadn’t died in the gave, he might have been pardoned because of a large number of petition signatures. This immediately caught my eye because it shows how sometimes people are against appropriate punishments for people who commit heinous crimes. Twain says, “If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon-petition and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky water-works.” This quote is important because it serves to ridicule those who have empathy for Injun Joe, which helps the reader to not care about Joe’s slow death. Another thing that possibly contributes to people not caring about Injun Joe’s death is the fact that Tom is paranoid that Joe is going to attack and get revenge on him, which invokes empathy within the reader for Tom, who is just an innocent helpless little boy who stood up for the truth. All of these factors help demonize Injun Joe to the point where the reader may actually be happy that Joe dies.

I find it odd that Twain uses harsh language against Joe but still depicts Tom as being moved by Injun Joe’s death. I don’t believe that Tom’s pity for Joe gives Joe any positive or favorable view. Up to this point Joe has been negatively depicted, so it seems that Tom’s reaction to Joe’s death was used to make the reader love Tom more for his empathy towards the man who probably wanted to harm him for ratting him out in court. Overall, I don’t think anyone cares that Joe died the way he did because of the negative characterization throughout the book, and the only thing that came out of Joe’s death was that Tom’s moral status in the eyes of the reader increased.

Although Injun Joe is a complex character capable of murder, I don’t believe his motivations are necessarily malicious and his feelings stray are clearly from a person who has an every day battle with their own self-worth. His actions and frustrations are motivated clearly by his feelings towards Dr. Robinson and Widow Douglas, which include a life of exclusion and mistreatment by others. We see this when he says, “Five years ago you drove me away from your father’s kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to eat, and you said I warn’t there for any good; and when I swore I’d get even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for a vagrant. Did you think I’d forget? The injun blood ain’t in me for nothing. And now I’ve got you, and you got to settle, you know!”

In the beginning, the level of vengeance he wanted to impose on characters, didn’t make me have any sympathy towards him or feel any sort of relation to his early life and childhood. Although his reasons behind doing such horrible things stem from deeper issues in his earlier life, I struggle with fully being able to feel empathy towards him because of his lack of remorse. I think I was ultimately becoming increasingly frustrated as I read about what he did because I wanted to be able to find his struggles relatable, but he lacked much character development in the end for me. Although I was able to gain a grasp of why he did the things that he did, there was so much mystery surrounding when he could lash out and at who. This is specifically depicted within the lense of Tom and Huck, who continued to fear for their lives and whether or not Injun Joe would come after them.

Although Injun Joe remained a heavily antagonist throughout the novel, he is essential to both Tom and Huck gaining maturity and learning about the importance of a good conscience, and I do believe that despite the lack of character growth, Injun Joe was a very methodically thought-out character in Twain’s mind. “A deadly chill went to Huck’s heart—this, then, was the “revenge” job! His thought was to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow Douglas had been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to murder her.” Here Huck is able to realize that protecting Widow Douglas and putting his fear aside is the most important thing, ultimately growing as a person and changing his view of the world.

Injun Joe is arguably the biggest villain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain made him a demon-like figure. As long as he appears in the chapter is accompanied by descriptions of his brutality and terror. In fact, I think if we’re going to discuss whether anyone cares about Joe’s death, we’re going to split the discussion into two parts — the characters and the readers.

Mark Twain clearly wrote in the book that there were some softhearted people who wanted the mayor to pardon Joe. Of course I think this is just another form of Mark Twain satire. But Mark Twain also shows Tom’s sympathy. When Tom saw Joe’s body, he thought not of how happy he was, but of Joe’s despair. This also proves that Mark Twain’s Tom is a kind child, although he is naughty. But Tom is full of empathy. In the book, Mark Twain highlighted Joe’s great crime that he could brutally kill the doctor because he had sent him to prison. So of course as a reader, Joe’s death is a cause for celebration.

But I think that the social context in which Injun Joe became such a brutal and violent person is also very much related to that. No one is born a bad man, and no one wants to be one. Joe’s Native American identity had bothered him a lot. Many people assumed that Joe must be mean and rude because he was an Indian. So even if Joe did turn out to be a rude bad person, people would just assume that the Indians were as bad as they were made out to be. So I think there’s a lot of angles to look at when you evaluate Joe.