Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck Finn

One of the main points Mark Twain makes in his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is that society, and especially Southern society, was a mob that even when led by "half a man" (Twain, 1981, p. 146) was still a mob, and would remain that way for a long time to come.

Sherburn, Twain's character who delivered this scathing account of the Southern man, had just killed the town drunk, and he, himself was about to be lynched. Sherburn states; "you don't like trouble and danger. You're afraid to back down - afraid you'll be found out for what you are - cowards." (Twain pg 146) This was quite a statement for a writer from that era. The cultural forces at that time demanded from the masses of society a type of 'get along' attitude coupled with a piety that was as condescending as it was obnoxious, though in Twain's era it may have seemed much more normal than if the same attitudes were to be prevalent in today's society.

No longer does society (in most cases) look to see what job, what career, what income level or what economic status does the male live, instead what is happening in today's world is that women are more often employed in the workforce, and instead of the marriage being a source of stableness for the female, based on the man, cohabitation can now be shown as a more competitive environment than was heretofore shown.

Studies seem to conclude that the relationships between men and women were much more likely to become a 'marriage' between the two if the man was already gainfully employed or a 'man of means'. There was no ready explanation for this turn of events except that perhaps during the book's era more was made of a man's social and economic status, than is done so in today's world.

Austen, a famous female author from the same era as Twain, portrays relationships in a more intimate setting than does Twain. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the relationships in Pride and Prejudice are more between the man and women than the relationships found in Huckleberry Finn, which portrays the two main characters as from completely different specters of society..

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and a runaway slave by the name of Jim, are traveling an 'idyllic' route fleeing from society in a raft down the Mississippi River. While doing so, Huck comes to realize that interactions between mankind, whether one of those men is a runaway slave or not, is a matter of adapting rather than giving in or changing completely.

Twain says this is true when he shows the humility of Huck in the book, who understands that he had done Jim wrong by fooling him into believing that the night's happenings had all been a dream.

In chapter 15 Huck says; "It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger, but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterward neither." (Twain 1981-page 86).

Huck is slowly learning that the conventions of the time, ie, that black individuals were property, not human were conventions that were not necessarily proving true. He was learning that Jim was a human being with feelings.

Another excellent example of this can be found when Huck awakens to find Jim moaning, holding his head and mourning to himself on the side of the raft.

"I know'd what it was about he was thinking about his wife and children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick

I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n." (Twain pg 155).

Huck is learning that humanity is human, that blacks and whites are the same, feel the same and have many of the same hopes, fears and dreams than what conventions of the day believed. His personalized learning goes entirely against the societal norm of the day. During Huck's era most free citizens still saw the Negro as an inferior being, not even human enough to consider as an intelligent entity, rather they are considered as property, and property has not rights, no feelings and no hopes, dreams or fears.

In an early chapter in the book, Huck sells his fortune to the Judge for one dollar in order to keep himself from lying to 'Pap', which is an excellent display of Huck's humanity and character, but it also shows how patriarchal the society was. Even Huck knew there was not a thing he could do against his father, if his father chose to take the money that Huck had been rewarded.

Huck also senses what money can do in society but his sense was one that questioned whether it was all that effective. While he was staying with the Grangerfords he discovered that they were as rich as 'town folk' but their sense of impending death more than overcame their sense of high society, not matter how much wealth they had accumulated. Huck describes the Grangerfords home as 'having brass doorknobs" which was to him 'wealth'.

At the same time, Colonel Grangerford is described as being a real 'gentleman'. "He was a real gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over, and so was his family." (Twain pg 104).

Twain seems to be showing the reader that wealth does not matter as much as a sense of what is right and what is wrong. A review of that era discovers that, "examining American writing at the turn into the twentieth century...provides a fascinating study of the intersection between literary realism and anthropology's ethnography" (Jirousek, 2004, p. 729). Jirousek's article goes on to examine how ethnography is displayed in the literary works of the era and states; "Some accepted the passing of a culture into history, some argued for the resilience of a culture, and others challenged the idea of a unified culture in need of salvage" (Jirousek, p. 729).