Huckleberry Finn Religion Analysis

Words: 1146
Pages: 5

“Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie--I found that out”( Twain 213). In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, religion plays a powerful part in that society had its grasp on “Providence”, thus governing right or wrong. Those who are civilized built their lives around a structured lifestyle, an organized religious sect, and a standard moral guideline for the whole of the community, followed by, or backed by education. Mark Twain uses religion to show the diversity and complexity of it, but also, to depict its role in society. Religion is the centerpiece that dictates moral judgement and action, character, and self-control. But society deforms this pure center by bringing in corruption, greed, lying, and hypocrisy. Thus, altogether, it forms a person’s conscience. Twain confronts society’s conscience through the persuasion of the heart. The heart represents the individuality of a person. It is the emotion, feelings, intuition, and the impulse or will that prods a person’s actions. Huck begins a journey along the Mississippi River to find his individuality and comes …show more content…
However, within each man was opposition, which fought consciousness by the raw emotion and intuition that declared the true nature of right or wrong, despite society’s laws. A summary of the novel by Keith Nelson states, “His head tells him what he should do and he vows to do it; his heart snatches the decision away and makes him do the morally right thing”( Nelson 298). Huck Finn represented a fight that everyone must have. That fight being a decision to either support and hold to his/her conscience’s ruling or to follow the morally correct promptings of the heart. In the novel, Huck overcame his conscience and helped free Jim, putting aside the consequences imposed by