Mark Twain exhibits realism in his literature by satirizing the foundations of society, characters and setting in a humorous and descriptive manner that captured the overall voice of American Literature. Twain uses past experiences as the driving force of his literature, which has even been said to be “too realistic,” because of his vivid representation of reality. Mark Twain lived west of the Mississippi River, which was a presiding foundation in his writings. Mark Twain began to write after the Civil War when there were a lot of social and economic changes going on in America. He was called a “regional realist”, a name given to an author who writes about a certain region, including their dialects, culture, traditions, and characters. For Mark Twain, realism was a way of speaking the truth and exploiting fundamental principles in society. The most substantial example we have of this is …show more content…
Before realism, literature usually focused on royals, nobles which were not relevant to the majority of people in America who lived in the lower-middle working class. For the first time ever, in Huckleberry Finn, Jim, a freed slave was just as big of a character as Tom or Huck. Though Jim was a slave, he was represented as an average person with everyday emotions. He made Jim a likeable and relatable character, so that people could really understand that slaves were normal people, and should not be treated otherwise. Jim is also portrayed as smart, moral, and complacent with himself, and he ends up being a hero in the story. In terms of the upper -class people in the story, Twain makes them out to be dishonorable, unintelligent, prejudiced and racist. This was a big step for the realism movement, where people of higher class were obligated to see how the “normal people” lived or people of lower social and economic