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Huckleberry Finn Vs Society

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Theodore Roosevelt once said, “ To educate a man in mind and not morals is to educate a menace to society.” Through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain depicts the oppression of the lower socioeconomic class and blacks in society during the post-civil war era. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about a young uncivilized wayward boy and his desire to escape from society. Huck is not well-educated or behaved which is evident in his dialect and grammar as well as his flippant attitude toward rules and cultured society. Although Huck is uncultured, he still has a good heart and good morals which is evident as the story evolves and Huck struggles with his own beliefs and sense of morality. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry …show more content…

Pap is a drunk and is considered the lowest white class in society. He is very resentful to Huck and belittles him for learning to read and being cleaned up. Pap’s attitude and behavior displays another negative component of society and the differences in the social classes. Huck loves his freedom and not having to conform to society and what is considered proper, but he is continually abused by his father and he knows he has to leave. He fakes his death in order to be free of his father and leaves one night when his father goes off to get drunk. Huck hides out on an island nearby. He discovers he isn’t alone but that Miss Watson’s slave Jim is also there. They become companions and Jim reveals that he is hiding because she was going to sell him. Huck battles his own conscience of being with Jim. He feels he should turn him in yet he likes the company. The book continues to show Huck’s struggle with society and their restrictions on certain classes and the more serious issue of race and slavery. Jim is treated and looked at by society as lower class society than Huck. His dialect and manner of talking is hard to understand and reiterates societies view of blacks as being uneducated along with the low white class. Huck makes the comment, "people would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum" (Twain 45). This comment emphasizes societies view of slavery in that part of the country as well as his standing in society. When the town learns Huck is dead, they of course think it is his father, but when they realize Jim ran away, they automatically assume it is him. This assumption is another demonstration of his social standing in society and an example of how he is treated. As low as Pap is considered in society, because of Jim’s skin color, he is considered a lower person on the social ladder. Huck learns of the reward on Jim’s head and immediately goes to warn him and is

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an American classic, it was the starting point for all great American Literature. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been awarded all of these honorable titles because of its abnormal and controversial plot line. During the time period when the book was written, it was unacceptable to view African- American’s as anything other than slaves. They were viewed as inferior to whites and were treated like property, they had no rights. The main character of the book, Huck, disagrees and disobeys these norms and pushes the boundaries of society when he becomes friends with a slave from his childhood; Jim.

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Society has many effects on people, and of course, it could perhaps be a negative or positive effect toward humankind. The negatives of society as a whole were surely exposed through the eyes of uneducated, immature, Huckleberry Finn. Furthermore, Huck is faced with many struggles throughout the novel, including Miss Watson urging him to become so called “sivilized” (Twain 37), being abused by his filthy, drunk father, Pap, and most of all keeping himself and Jim, the slave, safe from the dangers they encounter. Huck learns many valuable lessons throughout his journey, and changes from an inexperienced boy to a knowledgeable young adult. In addition, Huck rebels against the accepted answers of

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The constant complements and conflicts between Huck and society or parts of society lead him to question himself. Huck struggles between siding with society’s standard of right and wrong or his own personal code of ethics but eventually discovers to trust and rely on himself more than worrying about what society thinks he should do. The author, Mark Twain, instills his opinions about ignorance, slavery, and unique consciences into the hearts of the characters he creates to give the reader an exaggerated example of what is wrong with our society and how we can fix it by being

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Then the novel shows the cruel side of society in Huck’s father. When Pap gets custody of his son, he treats him dreadfully. All Huck wants is his own sovereignty, and to live where he doesn’t have to follow anybody else’s standards. Another struggle Huck must face is when Jim, a runaway slave, enters the novel. Huck has to choose between what society thinks is morally correct and what he thinks is the right thing to do.

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Jim is a runaway slave owned by a white lady named Miss. Watson; while his partner during his adventures down the Mississippi River, Huck is a young boy raised in a slave-owning culture. Jim will have to struggle with Huck’s moral dilemma of whether or not to view Jim as an equal; Twain continues to set Jim

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At many points early in the book, Miss Watson tries to make Huck more proper. Miss Watson would say, “Don’t put your feet up there Huckleberry”(Twain 3). Huck gets sick of hearing Miss Watson and Widow Douglas nag at him so he sets out for freedom from society. But before Huck gets the freedom he has longed for, Pap interferes and makes things difficult for some time. Although Pap takes

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In Mark Twain 's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain develops the plot into Huck and Jim 's adventures allowing him to weave in his criticism of society. The two main characters, Huck and Jim, both run from social injustice and both are distrustful of the civilization around them. Huck is considered an uneducated backwards boy, constantly under pressure to conform to the "humanized" surroundings of society. Jim a slave, is not even considered as a real person, but as property. As they run from civilization and are on the river, they ponder the social injustices forced upon them when they are on land.

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Near the beginning of the story, Huck sets stereotypes of black slaves as ignorant and lazy (Enotes). By the end of the story, Huck realizes that Jim is like any other person and should not be treated differently. In the middle of the story, Huck begins to come to this conclusion, “I do believe Jim cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so” (Twain Chp. 23).

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Throughout the rest of Huck 's journey he continues to meet people along the way that believe themselves to be good civilized people but they all contradict that in some way. The Grangerford 's are in a murdering feud with another family, the Phelps own slaves and are trying to get a reward for Jim, the townspeople that feather and tar the Duke and King without a trial, the execution of Boggs, even the Widow tells Huck not to smoke but takes snuff herself. Huck spends a large amount of time in the book pondering over how to be good and do the right things, and at the end of the book when he decides to go West and leave it all behind he has finally realized that he 's not the one that 's bad, society is. Huck heads back out into the world not for more adventure, but to get away from

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Huckleberry Finn is greatly affected throughout the novel by society. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the society that was supposed to teach him, take care of him, and want him, deformed his conscience and taught him all the wrong things about slavery. He was taught that slaves are property, they don’t know anything, and that they are meant to be slaves. This is all wrong and no one told Huck that, and he had to figure it out on his own. Huck is “a sound heart on collision course with a deformed conscience”.

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After living with Pap as a young boy and continually getting beat up, Huck looks for a way out. Huck shows early signs of maturity by escaping to Jackson’s Island while Pap is asleep and by covering the house in pigs blood to make it look as if he was murdered. While still in the very beginning of the novel, Huck has already matured tremendously. Another experience that Huck goes through is when Jim turns to Huck and says, “Pooty soon I 'll be a-shout 'n ' for joy, en I 'll say, it 's all on accounts o ' Huck; I 's a free man, en

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As Huck escapes from society by running away he had the chance of running into Jim on Jackson Island. During this time Huck displays his moral growth after playing a trick on Jim. Huck displays his moral growth because after placing a snake skin under Jim’s blanket, which eventually causes Jim to be bitten by a snake, he

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Naturally, as his bond with Jim cultivates, Huck unknowingly treats him as a human. Through Huck’s sensibility, he states, “It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes at all … I hadn’t no objections, ‘long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn’t no use to tell Jim, so I didn’t tell him” (Twain 125). Correspondingly, Huck gains a consideration for Jim and his personal feelings, which he expresses nonchalantly through motley aspects of their journey.

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