Huckleberry Finn Literary Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Written by Mark Twain in 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follows a young boy as he struggles to find his place in the world ("Mark Twain Biography"). “Huck,” as he is called, is unwilling and unable to conform to a civilized society, and embarks on a wild adventure as he searches for a lifestyle to which he can become accustomed. Along the way, he meets an escaped slave named Jim, who is coincidentally running away from his own life at Huck’s former home. Through his light narrative of a simple boy and an escaped slave, Mark Twain highlights three seemingly unrelated themes: racism, religion, and the gullibility of people. One of the major themes that Twain focuses on in his novel is racism. Twain clearly objected to slavery, and he makes this clear several times throughout the book. …show more content…
For example, when Huck’s father, Pap Finn, discovers that black men can vote in Ohio he says, “… what is the country a-coming to? … When they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin,” (Twain 29). Aside from the derogatory label given to all black people as a stereotype, this excerpt shows that Pap is exceptionally racist, and Twain underscores this attitude with a connotation of inherent futility. In another example, after Huck tells Aunt Sally of a steamboat explosion that killed one black man, she replies, “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt,” (Twain 223). This comment explicitly characterizes the societal value of black people in the South as being completely worthless. Additionally, Twain directly implicates slavery throughout the novel. As the novel progresses, Huck begins to see slavery as being morally wrong, which is reflective of Twain’s own opinion of slavery. This theme is perhaps the most prominent of all, as Twain alludes to it constantly in the

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