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Huck Finn Analysis

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The Antebellum period of pre-Civil War America was filled with racial tension where enslaved African Americans were treated as property. The early to mid 1800’s was a time when an entire race of people were written off as inferior. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, depict pre-Civil War American life in the heart of the south by following Huckleberry Finn, a young teenage boy, and a runaway slave Jim on their adventure up and down the Mississippi River. During the novel, Huck struggles with the discrepancy between his “sound heart and deformed conscience” (Mark Twain). Huck does not know which to to follow, his conscience or his heart, the first which is telling him to treat Jim and other African Americans harshly and inferior as he has been taught or the second which tells him to treat Jim as human and not property. Huck’s heart is leading him away from what society is telling him to do where as his conscience is telling him to conform to what to he knows. Through Huck’s character development, Twain categorizes his novel as a story where the heart wins over the conscience, ultimately suggesting that society corrupts individual thoughts and actions. Huck’s conscience is what allows him to interact with society because throughout his entire life, he is taught to see African Americans as inferior and not human. When he arrives at the Phelps’s farm, Huck first interacts with the matriarch of the household, Aunt Sally. Huck begins to tell her a fake story of how

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