Huck Finn Identity Research Paper

The grasping novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is written by the author Mark Twain. It is set in St. Petersburg, Missouri, on the banks of the Missouri River. Considering this novel was most likely written in the mid 1800s, people are treated differently than others depending on their skin color, gender, or religion. Twain wanted the protagonist, Huck Finn, to make a point of equality. This is made obvious when Huck befriends an African-American house slave, Jim. Equality is a strong message in this novel: from the color of your skin, to your reading level, to your social class. Huck has very strong opinions and feelings about everyone he encounters.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been called a great American classic for decades and likely will be for many more. The novel contains numerous prevalent themes including racism, morality, and satire, and symbols such as the Mississippi River that make it the quintessential American novel.

“From 1876 to 1895 black people were denied political recognition, forced into share cropping, lynched, involved in convict lease systems and intimidated in many different ways… process of “freeing the free Negro’” (Nilon 62). Many blacks were forced to endure cruel and immoral characteristics during the time of Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the late 1800’s to today. Huckleberry Finn is a white young boy that is prejudiced against blacks at the age of 13. He meets Jim, an African America man who escapes from his slave owner and is trying to find his family and gain his freedom for them and himself. Huck and Jim struggle with choosing what is right from wrong; Huck’s morals grow and develop, and he learns to judge a person by their character rather than their skin color. Many accuse Huck Finn of being racist, insensitive and criticized for its influence on a younger generation, yet it is for these reasons that this novel should be taught in schools; to further teach the historical

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a one of a kind novel. The novel has been debated as controversial since it has been published in 1986. It has been considered racist, due to the “n” word. In its earlier days, racist people felt this book was a disgrace, because of the mingling of the two main characters. Among all of the negative comments, this book is truly a masterpiece. It is an unforgettable and enjoyable book for everyone to learn and scrutinize; it contains a multitude of literary devices that makes this American Novel a classic with a meaningful American Story. The major literary devices in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn include historical context, dialect, and autobiographic. The characterization of Huck and

In Mark Twain’s the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the titular character, Huck, has this inner turmoil as he begins to challenge the idea of considering Jim, a slave, as a human being rather than property. Thus, showing how historically White American’s within southern culture and society have never viewed people of color, specifically African Americans, as human beings but as objects of oppression. Huck’s inner turmoil causes him to completely challenge the traditional white southern society by not wanting to be “sivilized” (Twain, 3), and coming to terms with the fact that Jim although a slave is a human being and not property.

Racism was an ever present evil that was prevelant during the 1830s and 1840s that lead to a multitude of wrongdoings against blacks. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about a young child name Huck and how he matures in a society teeming with racism. While on his adventure, he must learn to make tough, adult-like decisions. He travels down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave who later becomes one his his greatest friends. In Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn he ratifies his views on the struggles of slavery and illustrates the harsh reality of slave life through Huck and Jims relationship, the use of the Mississippi river to represent freedom, and Hucks role in the theme of racism.

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the reader will learn the story of a young boy named Huckleberry Finn, or Huck for short, who has run away from his abusive father. This story takes place during the Pre-Civil War which in history is associated with slavery. On Huck's

In Mark Twain’s classic novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, freedom is the prominent theme. Written over a ten year period, and completed in 1884 during post-civil war re-construction, the novel focuses on American society in the pre-civil war period (c. 1840), and in particular the issues of race and slavery. The novel’s two central characters, Jim a runaway slave and Huck a runaway boy are both seeking freedom. “ It is, as Marx so capably argued, what the book is about, but his own judgment that freedom in Huckleberry Finn "specifically means freedom from society and its imperatives," (Schmitz). For the two, freedom from “society’s imperatives” has very different meanings. Huck seeks freedom from civilization and the rigors of life with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson as they try to make him into a young gentleman. Jim seeks freedom from slavery and the opportunity to reunite with his wife and children. Although neither attains the freedom they were seeking, the journey down the river allows Huck to develop as a human being and attain an “inner freedom” from the pro-slavery attitudes and prejudices in which he was raised.

Huckleberry Finn’s rejection of normative societal standards make him the perfect narrator to portray Mark Twain’s ideals. T.S. Eliot states, “through the eyes of Huck there is a deep human pathos” (Eliot 350). In his novel, Mark Twain does not intend to degrade African Americans, he strives to make people realize the vice in slavery and the dehumanization of other people based on the color of their skin. Twain utilizes Huck in order to provide a perspective on slavery that has not been entirely corrupted by the societal beliefs of the time period. In David L. Smith’s article, “Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse,” he provides a definition for race: “a strategy for regulating a segment of the population to a permanent inferior status” (Smith 364). This concept is something that Twain understood and used to his advantage by making a character, like Huck, who is partially removed from this society and is not entirely influenced by its values. Another argument presents how “part of

The novel “The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn” was written by Mark Twain and is written in the time period of the 1830’s to the 1840’s when slavery was legal and African Americans were seen as unequal. Children like the main character Huckleberry Finn are being brought up and taught that African Americans were bad. Society wanted everyone to be “civilized”. Meaning everyone would be brought up having religion, clean clothes, education, and an indoctrination in right and wrong. As Huck tries to escape the civilized society, he comes upon a runaway slave that he knew because it was his neighbors slave. Huck then continued his journey and through his journey he came across many conflicts and Mark Twain uses conflict to reveal that we use our morality to make decisions in life even against what is thought to be right.

A novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, by Mark Twain, is contemplated to be one of the most magnificent representations of American Literature. In this novel, freedom and slavery is portrayed. Freedom has brought every perspective in play for each character. It follows with Huck and Jim, an impoverished Southern white boy and a runaway black slave, as they navigate down the Mississippi River to obtain freedom. Both Jim and Huck battle for their freedom when everyone in the outside world is trying to enslave them. Huck and Jim want to control their own lives without someone else’s authority. The number one theme of the book is a struggle between freedom and slavery. Racism plays huge roles in the novel as well.

In Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Huck is a poor uncivilized boy seemingly lacking merit whose treatment of Jim, a slave, evolves over the course of the novel due to Huck’s increasing awareness of his own faults and others’ treatment of enslaved African Americans. Twain utilizes Huck and Jim’s journey down the Mississippi river and their encounters as a physical representation of Huck’s growing maturity and recognition of the unfairness and immortality of slavery over the course of the novel.

In this historical novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Twain expounds on racial generalizations and how it influences the lives of the two primary characters, Huck and Jim. Huck Finn is a mischievous teenage boy who has never really had a ordinary home life. He battles with his conscience and the rights and wrongs of slavery. This novel is fitting for junior curriculum because it teaches us about the past and how many racial stereotypes there were. It also teaches us how to react to the stereotypes that are in the book.

Racism and slavery are portrayed everywhere in books and society. Mark Twain, when writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, used many themes -- one of which is slavery and its unfortunate result, racism. Even though the novel was written years past the Civil War in the United States, it was still considered a problem in the South. Mark Twain sought to spotlight the damage that racism had not only on society, but on the individual. Huck Finn, the main character, had to confront the beliefs instilled in him by his father and by society in general. As there is change happening in the real world he thought change could have been done in the novel. As Huck knew what he was doing to help Jim was not right, he knew the “wrong” was actually good. To see the suffering of just one slave, whom he came to know as a human being, he decided own his own to help Jim. Written during the Age of Realism, Twain created a vivid, colorful, and authentic novel that tells the coming-of-age story of one young man who faces slavery and its inherent racism.

The novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain follows the adventure down the Mississippi river, and through life, of the protagonist Huckleberry Finn, or “Huck”. The narrative is written from the perspective of Huckleberry as he details the events which happened to him throughout this journey. The novel first starts off in St. Petersburg, Missouri during roughly the 1830s/40s. Slavery ,at the time, was legal, and was common practice in most parts of the United States, especially in rural areas due to the attraction of a cheap labor force. This period of time specifically generates a large amount Internal conflict with the protagonist as the events in the novel unfold because of the moral dilemmas Huck finds himself in. As the story progresses, due to an abusive, drunken father, Huck runs away, traveling south of the river. Along the way, he meets an escaped slave by the name of Jim. They find out that they are in similar circumstances, and agree to work together.