In Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the young protagonist Huckleberry Finn runs away from his abusive father with Jim, a black slave. Throughout the novel, Huck encounters people that fail to understand the injustice of slavery and violence, despite their education. Although Huck lacks any substantial education, his moral values and judgment are highly developed. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses uneducated, colloquial diction and deliberate syntax to provide ironic contrast between Huck’s rudimentary level of education and profound use of moral judgment. Twain’s use of colloquial, homespun diction to veil Huck’s enlightened views on slavery and racism in the novel, creating an …show more content…
Twain uses colloquial diction to convey Huck’s struggle between the values of his southern upbringing, which urge him to return Jim, and his strong friendship and loyalty with Jim, which encourage him to protect the runaway. Although Huck lacks education, Huck interprets the laws in ways that are morally sound, an interpretation that most educated people fail to understand, while they blindly accept the injustice of slavery. Throughout the novel, Twain makes use of uneducated diction and syntax to convey an ironic contrast between Huck’s ability to discern between moral and immoral actions and his lack of education. Twain uses deliberate syntactical patterns in order to create an ironic disparity between Huck’s strong moral conscience and his inability to convey his judgments in a grammatically correct way. For example, Huck feels guilty about the plans of his acquaintances to con money from a mourning woman and “felt so ornery and low down and mean” that he decided to “hive that money for them or bust” (175). Twain uses the juxtaposition of Huck’s decision that stealing money from the woman was immoral and his plans to steal the money back from the conmen in his syntactical pattern to emphasize Huck’s ironic method of redeeming a crime with an action similar to the crime. Twain contrasts Additionally, when Huck encounters criminals while traveling down the river with Jim, he plans to hide the boat “in a place
Twain’s purpose in writing that part was to get people to realize and understand how ridiculous it is to treat someone differently just because of the way they look. Twain’s depiction of Huck’s moral struggle has been just one of the ways he gets his readers to understand the idea he was trying to convey. Throughout the book, Huck begins to gradually change his views on the issues of racism and slavery. He is quoted saying, “Alright then, I’ll go to hell.” (p.195) Right before tearing up a letter he wrote to Miss Watson telling her where Jim was. Huck realizes that he would feel even more guilty if he turned in his friend. Throughout the book, it had been hard for Huck to separate himself from society’s view of African Americans, and this part is a definite turning point for him, but also an important lesson. Huck’s decision reminds the reader that society doesn’t always know what is best, and makes people realize that the right decision might not always be the popular one. As Huck’s friendship with Jim begins to form as the book progresses, he soon realizes that his perception of Jim and other African Americans isn’t entirely
Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took place during a tense period in U.S. history. Heated debate over the morality of slavery had sparked and deep divisions were emerging between the northern and southern states. Born in Missouri, a slave state, the novel’s protagonist Huckleberry Finn was raised on values of racism and prejudice. He adhered to these principles as they were all he knew. However, over the course of his journey, Huck’s formerly provincial morality was challenged by his real-world experiences, and he was forced to derive a new set of morals for himself. At the start of the novel, a blind acceptance of slavery was present in Huck’s mind. This was revealed when Huck thought, in reference to Jim’s plan to free his children, “Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children – children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm” (137). Although grateful for Jim’s companionship and reluctant to report him to the authorities, Huck still believed slavery to be a moral practice. As evidenced by this thought process, Huck held on to the values of the slave-owning states in the south, believing that Jim’s children, as slaves, were property. He even felt remorseful at the thought of a man’s slaves being stolen. Regardless of his budding friendship with Jim, Huck was still concretely in favor of slavery. This static view on
Morality plays an important role in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck Finn is an uneducated, thirteen-year-old boy who does not necessarily know the difference between right and wrong, yet often makes the right choices throughout the novel. While Huck often accidentally does good, some people do not see this as an indication that he is a morally good person. Jim, on the other hand, is a slave who almost always does the right thing, but we are not inclined to see Jim as a moral model because he is a slave. Therefore, those who focus too heavily on Huck’s morality misunderstand Twain as Jim, not Huck, is the moral model of the novel.
Huck knows what is acceptable in society, but he constantly finds his conscience pulling him in the opposite direction. For instance, when Huck contemplates the fact that he is traveling with a runaway slave, he resolves to turn Jim in because of that is what society tells him is the right thing to do. He is paddling out to shore when Jim tells Huck that he was his best friend and the first white man to ever keep a secret for him. This deeply affects Huck and he realizes that he cannot turn Jim in, even when he runs into an assemblage of men searching for slaves that have run away. Twain is especially critical of slavery in Southern society in this novel. When Jim tells Huck he plans to earn enough money or find a way to steal his children away from their owner, Huck pities the slaveholder saying, “Here was this [slave] which I had as good as helped to run away, … saying he would steal his children- children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t even done me no harm.” Huck is not a bad person; he is simply blinded by his time. Twain is pointing out the social irony of a man having to steal his children because a white man owned them.
While he chooses not to hand Jim over, his position remains unclear. His moral compass is muddled. “I was stuck…but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time”. (l60). A true turning point reveals itself through Jim’s emotional vulnerability to Huck about Jim’s devotion to his family. While still bound by white southern culture, this added dimension to Jim’s character allows Huck to see past traditional stereotypes. Huck begins to view Jim more as a person and less as a slave. Having said that, Huck never reaches the point that readers so desperately wait for. While he decides to help Jim, Huck views his decision as morally wrong. It is Twain’s way of keeping Huck from overcoming the bounds of his culture, and Huck’s incomplete moral
In the novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, Mark Twain writes about Huck and the adventures his faces as he travels down the Mississippi River, along with his companion Jim. Throughout the story, Huck experiences obstacles that make him question society’s perspective and morals. As Huck spends more and more time with Jim, their friendship grow and Huck begins to see Jim as more than just a companion but a close friend. This causes Huck to challenge the morality behind slavery and ultimately decides to guide Jim to freedom. At this point in time, Huck has had an realization and decides to make his own path with his own beliefs and standards separating himself from society.
Mark Twain, in the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, exposes and criticises a series of flaws that had existed during the atrocities of discrimination and slavery. Throughout the fiction, Mark Twain uses vulgar and improper language to properly provide the reader a full and vividly realistic experience of prejudism during this time; in doing so, he points out the immorality of specific social problems such as the outlook on slavery. Twain leads the reader throughout the novel from the perspective of the protagonist, Huck Finn, who, interestingly, isn’t the average mundane christian child that lived back in the mid 1800s. For example, he didn’t endeavor to perform admirable deeds and reach man’s eternal bliss: heaven; instead, he desires a more dangerous approach of life that resembles a mindset similar to novel-like adventures. Huck even explicitly declares that he mind if he was
“I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery,” Huck shares, showing that he would be willing to risk his life and reputation to free his friend, Jim (Twain 195). Instead of this institution creating kind, caring, compassionate learners and leaders, the educational institution instills primitive, old world values into its students in the South. However, because Huck escaped this formal Southern education, he has good morals. Southern society considers Huck an uneducated, ignorant boy, but it is he who possesses far more knowledge and compassion than any educated person of the South, showing the hypocrisy of the society in which he lives. Huck relates, "It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study,” while he is living out in nature with his Pap (Twain 25). He does not enjoy a formal education of books and work, but can still appreciate the beauty and curiosities of the world, in nature and its people. Huck is able to see past the barriers society puts up, as he did not receive a Southern education, which creates people who support slavery and do not think for themselves. The educational institution is like a factory, pumping out identical children all believing in old world Southern values. Huck escapes from this ‘prison’ and only then does he become a better
Given that Mark Twain married Olivia Langdon Clemens, an abolitionist, and also had great acquaintances with other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, it is evident that he believed in the immorality of slavery and its necessary end. In order to provide a realist approach for the story, it became necessary for Twain to maintain the language used in southern states. Not only did the language prove to give a more accurate representation of the general sense of superiority white slave owners felt over their slaves, but it also set the precedent in literature for using language as a medium of conveying information about setting and characters. The language, in a way, is a necessary evil to expose and shed light on topics that make people uncomfortable. Furthermore, despite seemingly portraying Jim as ignorant and gullible, when looked at through Huck’s eyes, it is important to remember Twain intended for the reader to debunk the stereotypes Huck sees by understanding Jim’s true characteristics – caring, creative, and intelligent. Twain wrote this novel with the intention of creating discomfort, in an effort to bring to attention the problems that society shies away from, and banning the book would only go against progress.
Mark Twain, author of Huckleberry Finn, lived in the nineteenth century, an era ripe with slavery, tentative technological advancements and hypocrisy ingrained in religion. His attitude toward various moral dilemmas is manifested in the character Huck, who experiences a life-changing journey that seeks to segregate Huck's moral and religious thoughts. Twain's message in this novel is that morality does not originate from religion, and he uses various examples to illustrate his statement by contrasting the two with various symbols. Mainly, the author indicates the hypocrisy of certain characters, expresses symbolism through natural phenomena and brings his lesson to light via interactions between Jim and Huck.
Twain uses Huck to make decisions based on this hypocritical slave-owning, Christian lifestyle. Huck must choose to either aid a runaway slave named Jim or return him to Miss Watson, while the white society of the South would expect Huck to return Jim to Miss Watson. Huck and Jim 's friendship makes this a significant decision because Huck is morally conflicted. Jim is his friend, but he is also the property of Miss Watson. An excerpt from Magill 's Survey of American Literature puts the situation in a right perspective exclaiming “Jim is property before he is man, and Huck is deeply troubled, surprisingly, by the thought that he is going to help Jim, not only because he sees it, in part, as a robbery, but more interestingly, because he sees his cooperation as a betrayal of his obligation to the
Set in the Antebellum South, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn documents a landscape that differs greatly from the poised and picturesque scene associated with the contemporary South. Today’s South is synonymous with with ice cold pitchers of tea, ceaseless etiquette exuded on wraparound porches, and seemingly romantic drawls. However, the South that Huck resides in, tells a different story. Specifically, his South is a place where suitable behavior is associated with the acceptance of slavery, and racist slurs pepper every sentence. As a result, any deviation from these behaviors leaves an individual ironically branded with a connotation of being uncivilized. Due to this distorted view of ethics, any character with even a shred
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a novel full of racism and hypocrisy of the society that we know. Huck continually faces the many challenges of what to do in tough situations dealing with racism and what the society wants him to do. With the novel being written in the first person point of view gives us insightful information into the challenges the Huck is facing and gives us a look into Huck’s head. Huck uses many different techniques to deal with his problems and he gets through them with the end result always being what Huck believes is right. Through Huck’s perspective we see how he deals with all of the racism and hypocrisy of society to form him into the character that he is and to serve the themes of the
In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain presents the problem of slavery in America in the 19th Century. Twain poses this problem in the form of a character named Huckleberry Finn, a white boy raised in the antebellum South. Huck starts to question his view regarding slavery when he acquaints himself more intimately with a runaway slave while he himself tries to run away. Huck’s development as a character is affected by society’s influence on his experiences while growing up in the South, running away with Jim, and trying to save Jim. Although Huck decides to free Jim, Huck’s deformed conscience convinces him that he is doing the wrong thing.
Despite an ardent view on slavery evident through interactions with Jim, Huck’s slowly shifting view of Jim from that of ignorance to seeming acceptance expresses his ability to stray from flawed societal values to his own developed moral code of conduct. This becomes evident when Huck protects Jim from men who board his raft, by hinting he has smallpox. Although one can see this as compassion for Jim, Huck questions with racist undertones, “s’pose you done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad” (Twain 127). However, he later affirms himself to “do whatever come handiest at the time.” (Twain 127). At this point, society still influences Huck, but his statement marks his decision to detach from societal values, and eventually allows him to form his own views on Jim. This comes slowly, as Huck cannot shake free from racism.