Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Word Count: 1220

In Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, Twain develops the plot into Huck and Jim's
adventures allowing him to weave in his criticism of society.
The two main characters, Huck and Jim, both run from
social injustice and both are distrustful of the civilization
around them. Huck is considered an uneducated backwards
boy, constantly under pressure to conform to the
"humanized" surroundings of society. Jim a slave, is not even
considered as a real person, but as property. As they run
from civilization and are on the river, they ponder the social
injustices forced upon them when they are on land. These
social injustices are even more evident when Huck and Jim
have to make landfall, and this provides Twain with the
chance to satirize the socially correct injustices that Huck
and Jim encounter on land. The satire that Twain uses to
expose the hypocrisy, racism, greed and injustice of society
develops along with the adventures that Huck and Jim have.
The ugly reflection of society we see should make us
question the world we live in, and only the journey down the
river provides us with that chance. Throughout the book we
see the hypocrisy of society. The first character we come
across with that trait is Miss Watson. Miss Watson
constantly corrects Huck for his unacceptable behavior, but
Huck doesn't understand why, "That is just the way with
some people. They get down on a thing when they don't
know nothing about it" (2). Later when Miss Watson tries to
teach Huck about Heaven, he decides against trying to go
there, "...she was going to live so as to go the good place.
Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was
going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it." (3) The
comments made by Huck clearly show Miss Watson as a
hypocrite, scolding Huck for wanting to smoke and then
using snuff herself and firmly believing that she would be in
heaven. When Huck encounters the Grangerfords and
Shepardsons, Huck describes Colonel Grangerford as, "...a
gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so
was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that's
worth as much in a man as it is in a horse..." (104). You can
almost hear the sarcasm from Twain in Huck's description of
Colonel Grangerford. Later Huck is becoming aware of the
hypocrisy of the family and its feud with the Shepardsons
when Huck attends church. He is amazed that while the
minister preaches about brotherly love both the
Grangerfords and Shepardsons are carrying weapons.
Finally when the feud erupts into a gunfight, Huck sits in a
tree, disgusted by the waste and cruelty of the feud, "It made
me so sick I most fell out of the tree...I wished I hadn't ever
come ashore that night to see such things." Nowhere else is
Twain's voice heard more clearly than as a mob gathers at
the house of Colonel Sherburn to lynch him. Here we hear
the full force of Twain's thoughts on the hypocrisy an
cowardice of society, "The idea of you lynching anybody!
It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough
to lynch a man!...The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what
an army is- a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born
in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass,
and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the
head of it is beneath pitifulness" (146-147). Each of these
examples finds Huck again running to freedom of the river.
The river never cares how saintly you are, how rich you are,
or what society thinks you are. The river allows Huck the
one thing that Huck wants to be, and that is Huck. The river
is freedom than the land is oppression, and that oppression

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