Huckleberry Finn The Damned Human Race

Mark Twain’s essay, The Lowest Animal, details about our human beings’ bad and disgusting aspects. He talks about human beings’ greed, cruelty, vulgarity, wastefulness, and other lots of evil aspects. By introducing these things, he

Most people often assume that the aim of civilizations is for humanity to function together, jointly and cooperatively, so that humans produce and experience the benefits of moral people who live and act together. However, in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the reverse is true. The swap in societal stereotypes is apparent in the king and the duke’s production of the Royal Nonesuch as well as Huck and Jim’s pleasant journey down the Mississippi after escaping the family feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepardsons. Leading up to the performance of the Royal Nonesuch, the king and the duke

In his essay, “The Lowest Animal”, Mark Twain attempts to prove a pessimistic opinion of his. He compares humans to animals, and explains how contrary to widespread belief, humans are a lower animal to other species. While he makes some valid points about greed, selfishness, and violence, he misses the overall picture of human nature. I firmly believe that the human race is made of not only civilized, but caring human beings. If humans were as abominable as Twain attempts to make us out to be, we would not have countries, communities, or any other caring and loving, individual connections. We would also have countless amounts of prisons, prisoners, high mortality rates due to violence, and lower life-spans. Twain writes from a subjective point of view, allowing his opinions of

Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an exciting and seemingly light-hearted story, Mark Twain wrote the book to expose the systemic flaws in antebellum American society. One of its major themes is hypocrisy. Twain used a satirical approach to uncover the racial and religious hypocrisy of the South.

Twain decries the greedy and materialistic nature of society through the employment of pathos, which highlights the immorality of mankind. When the King and the Duke come up with their master plan to swindle money from the grieving Wilkes family, Huck realizes how avaricious they truly are. On page 164 Huck describes the way the King fools the crowd into believing he is a good person, “The King works

Within his essay of The Damned Human Race, author Mark Twain powerfully declares that the human race is both flawed and corrupt, and that people actually should be classified as 'lower animals' rather than the formerly known 'higher animals.' Twain does not hold claim to a Darwinian or creation standpoint, but rather draws conclusions from his own observations in performed experiments. He states that 'man is the cruel animal,' and that we can attribute this to his moral character. However, there appears to be another side which contradicts his findings. Perhaps man is indeed the 'highest animal,' but possesses something which other animals do not.

Throughout the novel, Twain shows his contempt for corrupt human nature. Although these instances are often satirized and exaggerated, the message is still the same. For instance, when the King and the Duke first start to lie about being the dead Peter Wilks’ brothers to obtain his money, Huck says, “It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race,” (191). In this instance Twain is utilizing Huck to show his aversion to the way people lie and cheat, and how a couple of people can make a bad name for all of us. Another example is when Jim sells the King and Duke out to the townspeople and they are carried on a pole, tarred and feathered. Although Huck, has tried to escape the King and Dukes several occasions and has witnessed the cruelties put on others and lies they tell, he does not think that they deserve similar treatment. In fact, he says, “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another,” (269). Through Huck, Twain is voicing his opposition to how people treat one another, whether they deserve it or not. Thus Twain is using his novel to voice his enmity for the cruelty in human nature.

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance….” Albert Camus, a French author and philosopher once made that observation about society. In his mind, a lack of understanding of the issues led to problems for everyone. Mark Twain, an American novelist, saw problems in society and went about to expose the ignorance behind them and encourage change. That is what he was doing in one of his most well known novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, three issues, identified by Twain, are explored in education, religion, and conformity that are still relevant today.

as Pap. The duke and the dauphin are con men that go down the river

Society can have a huge impact on an individual's moral growth. Sometimes the impact is positive but other times the learned habits and set morals of society have a negative effect. In Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character, Huck, struggles with what society teaches him and with what he knows to be good and true. During different conflicts concerning either the king and duke, various women or Jim, Huck's sound heart wins the battle over his conscience, which the reader knows to be ill-formed.

Although people disagree over what makes someone morally “good” or morally “bad,” most people can agree that caring and compassion are good qualities while intolerance and selfishness are bad qualities.  Mark Twain uses satire in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to amplify the good and bad qualities of people.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn exposes Twain’s thoughts on human nature by showing undesirable qualities of people in the racist white people and showing preferable qualities in the African-American slave, who is a victim of racism.  The racist white people are portrayed by Twain as prejudice and egotistic while Jim portrays compassion.

Twain uses hypocrisy to support Huck’s rejection of civilization. Pap is an example of hypocrisy, he states, “Pap took it and got drunk… jailed him again for a week… When he got out of jail the new judge said he was a-going to make a man out of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice… but was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn’t be

Mohandas Gandhi once said, “Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.” However, it may not hold true in Twain’s novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the novel, the protagonist Huck Finn’s morality and perception of others is shaped by the society he lives in, demonstrating that an individual’s morality or the epistemological sense of right and wrong can be largely influenced by society and the living environment. Yet despite strong traditions of the 19th century south, Huck is able to live away from the “civilized” world, leaving behind his hometown and travelling down the Mississippi river with Jim, a runaway slave. Huck’s unusual experiences with Jim contrast with his predetermined notions of race and power in the midst of the Jim Crow Era, thrusting Huck into a great crisis of morality dictated by his consciousness instead of his intellect. Through Huck’s journey in the search of morality, Twain conveys the theme that that morality is dictated by society, despite the goodness of an individual’s consciousness, it is difficult for and individual to intellectually challenge societal paradigms.

The human race can be criticized in many different ways on how we act, why we make the choices we do, and how we treat one another. In the two writings “Living like a Weasel”, written by Annie Dillard, and “The Lowest Animal”, written by Mark Twain, these types of criticism are very evident throughout each. However not only do they criticize the human race they bring about ideas about how we should act, how we should make choices, and how we should treat one another. Although both authors have respectively different views, it will be made clearly how evident how realistic the criticism is and whether or not the suggested behavior can become an attainable goal.

The world of Huckleberry Finn presents a curious mixture of Calvinist principles and aristocratic ideals. . . . We meet most of the fundamentalist Christian sects from their Sunday schools to their Methodist and Presbyterian churches; from Revivalist camp meetings to lay preachers (like brother Phelps) and ministers (like the Wilks brothers).  We meet representatives of all three classes from upper and lower orders of the ruling Whites to Blacks.  For that is the first division:  Whites (who are 'people') and Blacks (just 'niggers').  'People', in their turn are further divided into two castes:  'the quality' and plain 'folks.'"