Manipulation In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Saying that everyone merely has opinions is an understatement. The nature of humans is to aggressively remind, share, and express opinions and beliefs with others, which often leads to a bombardment of conflicting views. Everyone is shaped by the pressures and influences placed on them from birth , every lesson one is taught, and every belief one acquires, originates from someone else. Exterior pressures influence one’s opinions and lead to irrational decisions and behavioral changes; it is only through rational thought that one will learn the most appropriate actions for themselves and gain true independence of thought. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the innocence and naivety of the title character and others reveal the

The world in which he grows up forces him to believe that positive characteristics such as loyalty and a “level head” are “uncommon… for a nigger” (Twain 4) like Jim. This influence is not what Huck believes when he becomes independent from these pressures. On his adventures with Jim, he begins to see the slave and his race as equals. It took Huck “fifteen minutes before [he] could humble [himself] to a nigger” because of what he was taught about his superiority to the black man, but “[he] done it and [he] wasn’t even sorry for it afterwards” (x). His understanding that he should not feel sorry for apologizing to a slave leads him to believe that black men and white men are equal. Upon coming to this independent realization he strays away from how society expected him to act, which he now believes is not rational or morally just. Using this shift in opinion, Twain explains how in the world Huck lives in beliefs are thrust upon everyone to create a society assimilated in thought, but how these values also cannot be universal. Society forced Huck to think and act in a way that after allowed escape and time to think for himself, was not what he discovers to be