The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essay

Nathaniel Burns-Sarno
Advanced Placement English/ Mr. George
August 25, 2009
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essay Topic 1
Clemen’s Critique of Commonality’s Classes
“I feel for Adam and Eve now, for I know how it was with them…The Garden of Eden I know now was an unendurable solitude. I know that the advent of the serpent was a welcome change—anything for society.” These very words were spoken by author Samuel Clemens( better known by his pseudonym, Mark Twain), and recorded for his biography. With this one quote, anyone can acquire an idea of Twain’s feelings towards society. To acquire a much larger idea of Twain’s stance, they need only examine his literary works, which all seem to have some critique of darker sides of what was then modern society. In fact, Twain makes his disapproval of his society so clear that one could find a quote chastising society by simply opening to a random page of any one of his novels. Indeed, Twain makes a strong case against society, usually disguised within the seemingly simple storyline of one of his books. There is no greater example of this than “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, which despite being a sequel to one of Twain’s earlier works, has stood out on its own in the world of American Literature. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of the titled character, a boy living in the antebellum south who travels down a river with an escaped slave, Jim. Throughout the novel, Huck enters many towns and interacts with various characters, most of whom serving as the representation of the different classes within society. Through these characters, Twain makes it clear that society is far from perfect, and is in fact, a dark, racist, hate-filled plot of land inhabited by characters who are not worthy enough to be considered humans. To be fair, there are also many kind, good-natured characters within the novel, but just like in real life society, they seem either stay in the background or simply go unnoticed. The only compassionate characters who are the exception to this seem to be the two protagonists, Huck and Jim. However, even they participate in some activities that can be seen as less than moral by today’s standards. Granted, most of the bad things they had done were due to circumstances beyond their control, and even then none of their actions could hold a candle to the cruelty of most of the characters within the novel, who as I have mentioned before, serves as the embodiment of society. Twain shows society in many different lights, showing both its good and bad points. However, the bad points seem to far outnumber the good, which is to be expected from a work of Twain. Society is mostly shown as racist and conniving. Of the two, racism seems to be the most prominent.
The dominant critique of society(or at least what seems to be the dominant one to me) is the amount of racism that is put into its foundation. In the antebellum south, there was not even the slightest hint of equality. The color of one’s skin determined there place in society, and the laws surrounding all aspects of slavery were very(pardon the pun) black and white. If a black person was living in the south at that time, one could safely bet that they were a slave. In fact, any other bets would have been foolish. Not only were all black people in the south doomed to live a life of servitude under white people, but they were also treated as if they were not even human. The prime example of this is the use of the term “nigger” within the novel. This term is the most well-known derogatory term for a black person in society, and to speak it today would be considered a large taboo. However, Twain’s portrayal of the antebellum south in this novel show the word to be a widely accepted term. What I found most interesting about this is that white people were not the only ones to use it. Jim himself used the term various times in the novel, and never in contempt or bitterness. This shows that perhaps the word “nigger” had become so widely accepted that even the black people who were called by it found it to be a proper term. It could even go as far as a black person thinking themselves to be a separate species, not included in humankind. That would not surprise me, as it is made clear in this novel that the white people do not consider black people to be humans at all, denying them every right that they should have as human beings. What is worse is that some white people in this novel do not even value the life a black person. An example of this is when Sally Phelps, the aunt of Huck’s best friend, Tom Sawyer, asked Huck if anyone was hurt when the cylinder-head was blown out. When Huck tells her that it killed a nigger, she replies, “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt”(Twain 258). This shows that the life of a black person is worth nothing in this novel. They are treated like mules and sold for a profit on a whim. However, even though the black people get the brunt of the abuse within the novel, they are not the only ones treated with cruelty. Indeed, this novel shows that even those of the same skin color would use each other for a profit.
While on their travels, Huck and Jim encounter two con-artists(better known as the duke and the dauphin, whom they are posing as). These two men are arguably the most despicable characters in the novel, and serve to show how cruelty travels in a cycle. From the very start of joining Huck and Jim, who had just saved them from being captured, these men took advantage of Huck and Jim’s respective situations(Huck being a young boy who had feigned death and Jim being an escaped slave). All they seemed interested in was money and profit, and they did not care who they had to go through or how many people they had harmed in order to gain it. Despite being so unlikeable, these two men do help to portray Twain’s message about cruelty traveling in a cycle. The duke and dauphin advertise a performance in order to scam people out of their money. When they people arrived and found that the short performance was not worth what they had paid, they had a very interesting reaction. Rather than spreading the word that the performance was a scam, and helping their fellow man to not be cheated out of his money, the townspeople decided to tell everyone that the show was great so that those they told would go see it and be cheated out of their money, as well. This was perhaps done so that those who had already been cheated could feel better about themselves, as if they were in need of schadenfreude. While that is an understandable part of human nature, it is rare that anyone would feel the need to create it themselves. The duke and the dauphin also end up selling Jim for reward money, which shows that they are more interested in a quick buck than a long term investment. After all, they already had enough power over Jim to have him take part in their scams. These men being so despicable, I cannot imagine why they never thought of that.
Even though “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was written long ago, it still has a lot to teach us. This novel was written in a different time, when all men were far from equal. When juxtaposed with today’s society, it is clear how far we have come. An America where people were treated like slaves based on their race is now and America lead by a half-black president. Even so, I would not be surprised if in the future, people look back on our modern society and criticize how primitive we were. However, that is easily preventable if we keep striving for a better America. In the words of Mark Twain, “Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today”.