“The more I pretended, the more I understood that pretending was the most honest thing I could do.” ~ Percival Everett, James
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Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn presents Jim through Huck’s perspective—filtered, limited, and often patronizing. Jim speaks in dialect, acts the role expected of him, and remains quite one-dimensional to readers. Percival Everett’s bold retelling does not merely shift perspective. Instead, Everett creates a wholly new character in Jim, with depth, awareness, and a hidden backstory. He does this by building a character who is conscious of the role he performed in Huckelberry Finn, who is aware of the stakes of that performance, and who has a rich interiority that he must keep hidden. He does this through voice.
Everett starts James by orienting the reader to the old Jim, the Jim Twain established. The first few pages are filled with a dialogue voice we recognize, and a narrative voice that feels as if it goes along with that dialogue. But only five pages in, he gives us a scene with Jim at home surrounded by family. The dialogue voice shifts, but it is subtle. The family is talking about corn bread, and the language is common, everyday. A page later, he contrasts the two voices, offering them side by side. And a page after that, he makes sure the reader has noticed with a line of exposition: “ My change in diction alerted the rest to the white boy’s presence.” He essentially tells us to pay attention to voice. It is an important part of the story.
It is not only a dual dialogue voice that builds the character of Jim. Everett creates four voices in the text and uses each differently to build character.
The Four Voices of James
First is the Narrative Voice. The “I” telling us the story. This voice uses reflection to make meaning, when scene alone won’t do the job.
Point of view voice has a big impact on the way a story is told and received. Everett chose first-person narration for James, which typically creates an intimate and immersive experience for the reader by providing direct access to the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings, and senses. Everett’s does that, and it takes control back and gives Jim authority over his own story. Jim is no longer filtered through Huck’s limited, youthful perspective. Instead, Jim interprets his own experience, draws his own conclusions, and reflects on what things mean to him. This isn’t only about access to Jim’s thoughts; it’s about who gets to decide what those thoughts mean. This is the power of first-person; the narrator has a direct line to the reader, allowing for reflection.
Everett uses this reflective voice strategically. When action alone doesn’t convey the full weight of a moment, Jim steps back and tells us what it means. “The more I pretended, the more I understood that pretending was the most honest thing I could do.” This is reflection and interpretation. It is Jim making meaning from his experience, something Twain’s Jim never got to do this. Twain’s Jim existed in scenes, spoke in dialect, but did not reflect on what any of it meant to him. Everett’s Jim claims the right to interpret his own life. The same way we do in memoir.
Second is the Interior Voice. These are Jim’s thoughts, his dreams, his internal dialogue. This is the character of his mind.
While scene allows readers to fully experience and embody our stories, we also need interiority to understand the depth of our characters’ emotions. The interior voice is as complex as a layered cake. It reveals characters’ emotions and internal reactions from surface observations all the way down to the subconscious, and can do heavy lifting in character development. In James, this is where Everett reveals Jim’s education, his philosophical depth, his emotional complexity. Jim references John Locke, contemplates Voltaire, and wrestles with abstract questions about freedom and identity. This isn’t decoration. It’s how Everett builds a character who is complex and intellectually sophisticated.
One way Everett accomplishes this is by using this interior voice as contrast. Because we have access to Jim’s interiority, we understand what he’s hiding when he code-switches. We see the full range of his thinking. The fear, the rage, the love for his family, the philosophical questions. And we see how much of that he suppresses. The interior voice tells us Jim is smart, and it also shows us the exhausting gap between who he is and who he pretends to be.
This voice carries a lot of weight because it’s where Jim is most himself, most unguarded. It’s the baseline against which the reader measures other voices Jim uses. The interior voice makes the performative voice a clear performance. And when Jim shifts into dialect or simplifies his speech, we feel tension and loss because we know what he’s capable of.
Third, we have the Spoken Voice. The Jim Dialogue.
This is the dialogue voice Twain gave to Jim. This is the way he speaks around white people in James. The dialect, the simplified grammar, the careful self-diminishment. The “Yes, suh” and the “I don’ rightly know.” But Everett transforms this dialogue from characterization into character choice. The dialect doesn’t tell us who Jim is. It shows us what Jim knows about survival. It is performance.
Everett turns this dialogue around and shows that Twain’s characterization of Jim’s intellectual limitation is a mask. Jim isn’t speaking this way because he doesn’t know better. He’s speaking this way because he’s hiding parts of himself.
Jim doesn’t slip into dialect unconsciously. He chooses it and uses it strategically. He adjusts his form of speech based on who he’s talking to and what he needs them to believe. Around Huck, he’s careful at first, but as his trust grows, he drops the performance and speaks in his real voice. Around threatening white men, the performance intensifies. The dialect becomes thicker, the difference more pronounced. The result is that in every situation, we feel Jim calculating: How ignorant do I need to seem right now?How non-threatening? How much of myself can I reveal? And through the old Jim dialogue, we feel Jim’s constant, exhausting vigilance.
And finally, fourth, we have the Dual Dialogue. The James Dialogue. The way he speaks around family, friends, and other black people.
The James voice reveals Jim’s identity in ways the other voices cannot. His Interior Voice shows us his emotions, his Narrative Voice makes meaning, his Spoken Voice reveals his strategy. And the James Voice shows us who he is. This is the part of the self that exists in community, shaped by relationship and shared experience. It’s not performed, and it’s not private. It’s the identity that emerges when James can be himself with others.
Everett uses this voice to show us what James loses in every other context. With his community, James doesn’t have to calculate every word. He can express tenderness, frustration, humor, love – the full emotional range of a person in intimate relationship. He’s not performing ignorance, and he’s not delivering philosophical exposition. He’s talking the way people talk when they’re with those they trust.
It is interesting to notice that the James voice doesn’t appear as often as the others, which is meaningful. Jim spends most of his time either alone (interior voice), trying to survive (Jim dialogue), or narrating his experience (first-person with reflection). The scarcity of moments when he can simply talk with his people emphasizes what is lost: not only freedom of movement, but freedom of expression, the ability to exist in authentic relationship without constant vigilance.
How The Four Voices Work Together
Character complexity comes from more than piling on traits and backstory. It comes from making choices that reveal how characters exist in their worlds. In James, each voice serves a specific function. The narrative voice gives Jim authority to interpret his own experience. The interior voice shows us the mind and emotions he must hide. The spoken voice demonstrates his constant vigilance required to survive. The dual dialogue deepens what’s lost. Together, they create a character who is thinking, performing, reflecting, and longing.
Everett doesn’t simply tell the story from Jim’s point of view. He builds a character whose multiple voices embody and reveal the complexity of his experience. The result is that James feels fully developed and emerges as a believable, engaging character who creates empathy in readers.
After studying James’s voice, I wondered how I could more fully express my protagonist through voice. Am I allowing her to code-switch? Have I flushed out her interiority, allowed her to reflect when necessary? How can I show her limitations, her desires, her emotions through authentic and full voice?
🤔 Questions to Ponder for Creating Character Through Voice: Pick one, think it through, bring to class
- What is the relationship between your narrator’s voice and your protagonist’s voice?If they’re the same person, does the narrator’s interior and reflective voice differ from their spoken dialogue? If they’re different people, how does the narrator’s perspective shape or limit our understanding of the protagonist?
- How can you use interiority to create tension with action? The power in James comes from readers knowing Jim’s sophisticated thoughts while watching him perform ignorance. This opens a gap between his interior life and his spoken words. Where in your story might you strengthen the contrast between what your character thinks and what they do or say?
- Where does your protagonist get to be fully themselves? Jim’s dual dialogue with his community shows us what he loses everywhere else. In your story, where can your protagonist drop their mask? If they never can, what does that absence reveal about their world, both inner and outer?
- Does your protagonist code-switch? Consider whether your character speaks differently in different contexts—with family versus strangers, in moments of safety versus danger. How might adding multiple dialogue voices reveal hidden depths or internal conflicts?
