Theme Of Mob Violence In Huckleberry Finn

Although both Atonement and Mountain Standard Time all deal with the topic of reactionary mob violence, they deviate from one another on the bases of the incentives behind the attacks, the reactions from the targets, and themes on human nature the authors send with these scenes. Ian McEwan’s Atonement contains a scene of violence where a crowd of British infantry in World War II come to surround a lone air force operative after their frustration over a perceived lack of support after suffering losses in a battle. The scene starts with a soldier named Turner calls out the operator, asking: “Where were you when they killed my mate?”(McEwan 1). The soldiers quickly come against the operator, accusing him to be responsible for the lack of air

In general, both scenes have similar motivations and outcomes, with many of the important differences coming from the two victims’ choice to resist the mob or to submit.Mark Twain writes of a similar scene of violence In Huckleberry Finn, but has a drastically different message and turn of events. The conflict between Boggs and Colonel Sherburn comes as an abrupt halt to Huck’s rite of passage, leaving behind the main characters, save Huck, to set up a side conflict with a message coming from Mark Twain. After the colonel kills Boggs, a crowd assembles to enact justice upon Sherburn by lynching. Directly after Sherburn leaves Boggs, the people assemble a mob who charge upon Sherburn’s home. When confronted by this massive opposition, Sherburn’s reaction is to talk to the mob, and he questions its strength, exclaiming; “ The idea of you lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man!”(Twain 146). When threatened, the colonel shuts down the mob, using his position to talk down to the mob, and deconstruct their anger, using words such as pitiful and coward to convince the people of their alleged weaknesses. Not only does Sherburn’s speech halt the mob’s advance, but the crowd instantly dismantles, ironically running from a threat from the man they threatened to lynch. The mob’s dismantling proves his point and leaves his actions towards Boggs unresolved. Given the obvious break from the main plot, Mark Twain writes the subplot of Boggs and Sherburn with a message in mind, using Sherburn’s idea of a man to suggest his visions on personal responsibility and condemning the weaknesses of a