Examples Of Corruption In Huckleberry Finn

Running away as a child can be seen as a way to escape. A child can escape their parents, their responsibilities, and society as a whole. It is a way to get away from everything in one’s life and live naturally. This is very similar to how Huckleberry Finn decides to live his life in the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. In this story, set in the south before the Civil War South, Huck decides to abandon his life at home and live life on a raft, floating down the Mississippi river with a runaway slave Jim. On their journey, they meet people from different walks of life, engage in a decades long feud, and even attend a circus. However, this novel is not all fun and games. Mark Twain blatantly demonstrates his beliefs in

A prominent example of this is shown when Huck visits the Grangerford family. The Grangerfords have been locked in a decades long “feud” with a nearby family, the Shepherdsons. The two families are willing to kill each other on sight and don’t even know how the feud started. However, the families attend church together with their guns between their knees. On page 171 the text states; “Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody ahorseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.” This text shows how society is corrupt, for multiple reasons. Not only are families who kill each other going to a sacred place together under a temporary cease-fire, they are also hearing a preacher speak about brotherly love and saying that it is a good sermon. Clearly, Twain is attempting to share his beliefs that many people who attend church are hypocritical, and that religion is

Throughout the story, Mark Twain uses Huck to suggest that “natural life” is more desirable. The entire plot of this novel revolves around Huck and Jim floating down the Mississippi River on a raft and going on adventures each time they come to shore. However, as the story goes on, the reader realizes that when Huck and Jim get off the raft, they constantly meeting criminals and other bad people. Life on the raft is as peaceful as it gets, but when Huck is ashore, he meets slimy people, including the Duke and the King, some of the people involved in the feud, and Colonel Sherburn and Boggs. Huckleberry Finn and Jim also witness some extreme violence, including tarring, feathering, lynching, theft, murder, and quite simply, a lot of death. For example, even the gentle Mary Jane says that the Duke and the King should be “tarred and feathered.” (Twain 190) The fact that Huck sees so much death when he visits civilization goes right back to Twain’s obvious suggestion throughout the story that society is corrupt and unprincipled, and that Huck’s life on the raft is far more attractive. The next example of Huckleberry Finn enjoying the natural life occurs when he is taken away by his father. While he is living with his father he comes to enjoy the uncivilized life more than the way he lived with the Widow, despite the fact that his Pap is an