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Deception In Huck Finn

Decent Essays

Mark Twain seems to be more forgiving towards characters who have used necessary deception than the ones who have acted, in some way, hypocritical. Though hypocrisy and deception are both looked at as pessimistic actions in our society, Twain points out that sometimes lying or bending the truth is necessary in some cases. In a perfect world there would be no need for anyone to bend the truth, but this isn't a perfect world and Twain knows it. There is greed, selfishness, and no telling who can be trusted. Since there are such people in the world, Twain seems to find that deception, or the process of misleading others, is necessary at times for people have the potential of doing selfish and greed driven things, like Huck's father. He's an abusive drunk who almost murdered his own son, so to escape him, Huck had to deceive his …show more content…

If Twain thought differently, he had the power to have the plan go terribly wrong, but it didn't and Huck escaped his father. Huck also deceived Mrs. Judith Loftus, by pretending to be a girl. This act hit a few bumps in the road, but because Mrs. Loftus seemed to have a greedy side to her, wanting the reward money for Jims capture, so, in the end Huck managed to avoid trouble and squeeze himself out of the situation. Hypocrisy on the other hand is a little different from deception. Hypocrisy is when someone believes in something; a moral or a certain way of living but does not apply the belief to their own lives. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there are many examples of hypocrisy and one of them these hypocrites' happens to be Huck's father. After crying and promising the new judger that he was going " to turn over a new leaf" and make something out of himself other than a drunkard, Huck's father, only a few hours after his promise, sets out for a night at the bar, going back against his words of wanting to "be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed

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