Mark Twain never planned for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be anything more than a story. In fact, he said multiple times that there was no underlying moral and not to read into it. Although that was what he wanted, many people believe that it is one of the best pieces of American historical literature ever written. While I agree that Huck Finn is sitting on the shelf alongside the best books ever made, its value to me is much deeper than a good story. Mark Twain transported me back in time to the 1800’s and put me in the shoes of a wild young boy called Huck, and a black slave named Jim. Along the way, Huck is faced with a number of tough decisions that force him to test his ability to decipher between right and wrong, despite the typical conventions of the society he lived in. What I …show more content…
Putting someone’s needs before your own and expecting nothing in return, plus being selfless to whoever no matter what are characteristics that are very important to me. Huck demonstrates kindness and compassion for Jim in a time that African Americans received neither one. Later on in the book, Aunt Sally asks if anyone is injured in a boating accident that has occurred, Huck says just a black person, and she responds by saying well that’s good no one was hurt. They believed that if you had black skin you weren’t even a person. Twain’s goal was to portray what America was like in the 1870s, more specifically in the South. His novel became a central record of American history because it documented racism and race relations in a simple way that had never been done before. During his writing process, Twain himself became an activist for African American students. He paid tuition to recompense in an effort to repay a small amount of what they had to endure. This novel helped me better understand just how terribly African Americans were treated in America in the 1800’s, and affirmed in my mind at a young age that all people are equal no matter their skin