Twains Criticism of Society at the time of Huckleberry Finn The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is an extraordinary story of growing up, morals, child abuse, con men, and a lonesome boy who must embody these themes and more throughout his remarkable adventures upon the Mississippi River within Missouri. Although Mark Twain 's novel embodies several themes, the most prominent underlying idea of Twain 's novel is his social criticism of racism as he explores the injustices society has inflicted upon the African American man while investigating the speciousness of a "civilized" society. The setting plays a vital role within the criticism of racial injustice at the time. The novel is set before the Civil War, between 1835-1845. Twain 's novel is a realistic representation of the cruelty of slavery and racism at the time. Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in the late 1870s and early 1880s to reflect upon a time before the Civil War when slavery was conspicuous to someone looking from the outside in. However, those whom were involved in this society were unable to decipher the injustices at the time. Huckleberry was an exception in a few ways because he gets to know a slave, Jim, and befriends him. When he befriends Jim, he begins to see Jim differently than the community. The novel is set in a Southern community; however, the southern society Huck grows up in is not full of fancy dresses and sweet tea. The society Huck grows up in is the backwater South where they