Huckleberry starts off the novel as a naive thirteen year old with very little experience of the world. As Huck travels down the river, he encounters many different aspects of a “sivilized” community. Mark Twain shows the irony of a so-called civilized society and its members by contradicting the idea of civilization with reality. Huckleberry experiences civilized citizens in a small town down the river from St. Petersburg, a made up town in Missouri. In this ordeal, Huck witnesses the murder of a drunk man by a well-respected “civilized” citizen. Then the crowd decides to lynch the man, Sherburn, and Huck describes them as, “They swarmed up towards Sherburn’s house, a-whooping and raging like Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or
