Effects Of Slavery In Huck Finn

The societal pressure to believe in the institution of slavery has a strong effect on Huck, distorting his views and causing him to start out racist. Society’s norms have a great influence over the people in Huck’s world. At this time, most people held racist idealogies. The people Huck was surrounded by believed that slaves were nothing more than property, and the color of their skin was something that detrmined their worth. As Huck was brought up, he was taught these ideals of society. His father, Pap is someone who is completely immersed in society and shows the reader through his views, the effect that society can have on the average person. When pap hears about a free slave in Ohio who became successful, he is infuriated. He says “here

Throughout the course of the novel, Huck transforms from a product of society into someone that chooses to rebel against all everything he has been taught by helping Jim. Huck is clearly racist when he first meets Jim. He still follows the ideas of society. However, as he gets to know Jim, he is able to see Jim differently. He starts to form a connection with him. As this change in Huck begins to happen, Huck struggles with deciding whether to help Jim, going against what he has been taught, or to turn him in, doing what Huck believes, is the right thing. Huck feels compassion for Jim, but he thinks that helping him is directly defying God. “it [Huckleberry Finn] is an image of the conflict between social and personal virtues, between, on the one hand, people 's associations as social concepts and social products and, on the other, their associations simply as human beings”(Ostrom, 164). Huck grapples with his personal feelings, and what society has taught him. Jim is seen by most as simply a slave who is inferior. This is the mindset that Huck was brought up with. But Huck sees Jim in a different light, and acts in ways that members of society would never act. One time Huck’s development shows is when he tricks Jim. Huck makes Jim think that an event that happened was all a dream. This upset Jim so in response Huck said, “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards,

The raft acts as Huck’s escape from society as it is isolated from society and its views and is the reason Huck is able to see Jim as a real person. When Huck is in society, he is surrounded by racism. The raft is the place where there is just Huck and Jim and Huck is able to interact with Jim with out the pressures of society. The enormous change in Huck is due to his isolation from society. When he is on the river, he is able to think freely and do what he believes is right. He is able to form a connection with Jim because on the raft Huck was not a white boy and Jim was not a slave, they were equals. There were no societal roles placed on them, they were free to simply live. The longer Huck stays on the river, away from society, the more he is able to see past the stereotypes and see the real Jim. “Huck alternates between seeing Jim as an individual and seeing him as a social concept...the alternation is related to the relief from society’s pressures and the resumption of them, relief coming always on the river and the increase of pressure coming on-or from-the shore”(Ostrom, 171). Huck struggles between following the views of society or his own personal experiences through the book. But if he had not been isolated from society, he would never be able to think for himself and form these opinions. When he is in society, he acts like a kid and follows Tom Sawyer around trying his hardest to act like him. But when he is on the river, he is no longer a kid in society,