Examples Of Mob Mentality In Huck Finn

We’re All Weak, Except When It’s All of Us

Mark Twain’s The Adventure’s of Huckleberry Finn explores and critiques many topics associated with early southern America. One of these topics is the idea of the weakness of an individual which has been coined “Mob Mentality.” Mob Mentality is how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors. Huck Finn is the perfect example of critiquing human weakness because Mark Twain does it so often. Between the church revival mob and the duke and the king as well as the lynch mob scene all topped off with the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons feud, we find an abundance of examples against human weakness. One thing that Twain wants to warn against is that we can be so swept up in the moment in a crowd that we loose our own opinion and voice as our voice becomes that of hundreds or thousands. Twain also wants to bring to light that people don’t see their actions as negatively in a group than alone. Why could this be? Probable because we think of them as actions outside of ourselves. We also must realize that Huck and Jim use this mentality of power in numbers when they set off and get on the river. Which brings to light questions about whether they had each other’s best interest at heart or if they were working for their own selfish motives. Twain uses a lot of examples to critique mob mentality and the human weakness and he wants the reader

There is an overabundance of examples in which Twain is writing against the “mob mentality” in which he often refers to those who succumb to this mentality as weak and as cowards. He seems to not use it as maliciously in children, such as when Tom and the boys form their gang of thieves (Twain 48), but it is very apparent that Twain does not condone the behavior in adults, as shown quite apparently in the lynch mob scene. Almost every character, if not every character, in Huck Finn falls prey to this idea at one point or