Huckleberry Finn Romanticism Analysis

Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn comments on the social issues of the time period, including racism, religion, and Romanticism. Twain uses Huck and his experiences to convey criticisms of them. Every episode of the novel plays a role in forming the point of view by shaping Huck into a realist. Some episodes seem more random and useless than others. They shouldn’t be dismissed. The Walter Scott episode is one of the shortest and least relevant in the novel, but it is crucial in showing realist’s qualities in Huck. The Walter Scott episode provides an insight into the contrast of the nation’s acceptance of racism and its contradiction to the common sense. In the episode Huck has left a gang of murderers to die on the steamboat,

The Walter Scott episode criticizes religion and the ‘moral’ chains it puts onto people. Huck hasn’t been immersed in the culture for a long time, so he notices small things that aren’t talked about. After trying to save the murderers, Huck says: “I judged [widow] would be proud of me for helping those rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and the good people take the most interest in”(Twain 94). Huck notices that the public isn’t interested in helping everybody, but is instead looking for the worst cases to feel more proud about themselves. However, later in the novel, when Huck hesitates in saving Jim, he says: “I was letting on to give up a sin, but away inside me I was holding on to the biggest one of all”(Twain 247). Huck can’t comprehend the contradiction of society seeking excuses for themselves in religion and the actual moral part of it. In Twain’s novel other people are criticized for holding back and supporting immorality just because they have a convenient excuse. Huck on the other hand, is presented as an ideal religious person at that moment. He chooses not to seek escape or look for payback from the Heavens, instead, he’s even prepared to be punished for doing the right thing and lying to himself. In the end, Twain promotes the realistic approach to religion which encompasses staying moral and true to yourself, instead

During the Walter Scott episode Huck is enthralled by romantic thirst for adventures that Tom Sawyer has. When arguing with Jim about ransacking a wrecked steamboat Huck says:” Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure -- that’s what he’d call it; and he’d land on that wreck if it was his last act” (Twain 85). At the beginning of his adventure Huck has left home as a romantic, looking for adventure and being free; however, the journey brings out his true nature of a realist. This can be seen as he fails to realize the romantic values of Tom Sawyer when Tom agrees to help him free Jim: “Here was a boy that was respectable and well brung up; … yet here he was, without any more pride or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop his business, and make himself a shame…” (Twain 271). Huck thought that Tom is helping the cause, that Tom wanted Jim free, but in the end it truly turned out that Tom “wanted the adventure of it” (Twain 335). The contrast of boys’ goals and values displays Hucks evolution into a true realist who goes towards his goal while trying to stay moral to himself. Twain ridicules the romantics and praises the realists by saying that former only try to satiate their boredom, while latter have a cause to fight