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Huckleberry Finn Hypocrisy

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In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain talks about his experiences before the Civil War through the eyes of a young boy named Huckleberry Finn. Throughout the story, he points out the hypocrisy of society, morality and the controversial issue of racism and slavery. In today’s world we have different cultures and societies. There are certain views that these societies or communities have held for many years. Some have changed, some have not. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain describes the society around Huck as a place with faulty logic. You see this with the fact that Huck goes to school for education and when the widow teaches Huck that smoking is “a mean practice and wasn’t clean” (Twain 2). This is also shown …show more content…

The most obvious connotation of this is the use of the word “nigger” in the book. In today’s society, this is taken as a derogatory term by modern-day society, in this story it is used simply as a reflection of the time. Twain uses this kind of language to ensure the realism and portray the times as they were (Marsh 1). Then we have Jim, who follows Huck into his adventures such as going to the wrecked ship and going with Tom and Huck’s escape attempt towards the end of the story. He also ends up at the mercy of the duke and the king, who threaten to give him away. Throughout the story Huck’s attitude toward Jim starts to change. He struggles at first, but then you get a sense that he start to have a grasp on how his society forced him to think before. This growth is evident when he shows reluctance to apologize to Jim for tricking him; he truly feels terrible and is honest in his apology (Twain 107). In the end, both Huck and Jim achieve a certain degree of freedom. Huck gains freedom from “sivilization” and Jim from slavery, but they achieve a certain degree of freedom outside of these. They get freedom from the mindset of the racist South. Huck learns to look at Jim not only as a slave or Negro, a piece of property, but as a human being and as a

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