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Huckleberry Finn Research Paper

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After the abolition of slavery in 1865, some Americans felt there were no more problems with race, as everyone was technically "equal." Realist author Mark Twain challenges this in his 1883 classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck Finn was different than most of the anti-slavery literature at the time because it used humor to comment on Southern society. It pointed out readers errors through exaggeration and absurdity, forcing them to take a hard look at their own morals. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain points out the ignorance in white society through the satire of Pap, the Grangerfords, and sentimentality.

Throughout the book, Twain focuses in on white society, no matter the social ranking. He goes after the common class through Pap, Huck's father. Pap Finn is everything most white men in the South were at the time- uneducated, poor, and most of all, racist. In his drunken soliloquy, Pap rants, “There was a free n----- …show more content…

Petersburg. When Pap is in court, the judge takes a special interest and tries to rehabilitate him. After Pap swears himself to temperance, “[the judge] cried, and his wife she cried again…then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room...and toward daylight [Pap] crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm...” (pg 21-22) The judge and his wife look so foolish here, crying and crying over nothing. They allow Pap to swindle them because they are so convinced they are good people. If they actually cared about helping those in need they would be out campaigning for abolition. These do-gooders aren’t doing any good at all, they are just enabling irredeemable people like Pap. They are too afraid to tackle the hard issues so they rightfully get cheated. Twain satirizes these “humanitarians” to show that sentimental people are stupid, gullible, and are of no help to

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