Huckleberry Finn Satire

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Throughout the early 19th century, America was combatting the ever controversial issue of slavery. African Americans were viewed as the “other” and were treated as if they were a threat to white societal norms. Concentrated heavily in the South, slave states were largely reliant on slave labor for the well-being and stability of their economies. Many individuals believed that an abolishment of slavery would cause more harm than good with widespread unemployment. Set forty to fifty years before its publication, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, directly confronts the pre-Civil War era that was entrenched in slavery and intense moral confusion. Mark Twain’s satirical stance on the nature of adventure and romantic literature is evident throughout…show more content…
When Huck learns of Jim’s capture, he attempts to pray in order to “see if [he] couldn’t try and quit being the kind of a boy [he] was, and be better” (261). However, Huck is unable to pray due to the fact that he cannot subscribe to the ideals that white society has taught him. Furthermore, Huck continues that he knew that his inability to pray derived from that fact that he “warn’t square” but was rather “playing double” (261). Huck, himself, admits that he cannot fit within the box society has attempted to fit him into and that he has been not only lying to others throughout the entire novel but rather lying to himself about what he should do in regards to Jim. After wrestling with his internal moral compass, Huck resolves to free Jim and states, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” as if his actions are not in alignment with the greater society and even higher being that is God (262). In this moment, Huck displays immense maturity and growth such that he is willing to trade his fate for that of Jim’s. In doing so, Twain emphasizes that Huck accepts that life of a black man and equates it to his own thereby rejecting societal norms and making his own conscience decision. Moreover, in this instance, Huck accepts sin and immortality which are terms closely associated with Christian ideals…show more content…
Therefore, at the end of the novel Huck has indeed grown but he is still left to make sense of the world around him which presents as many new problems as solutions. Clearly, Huck has received a lot of different ideas about slavery and its functions. However, his rejection of a life of slavery for Jim does not yield a total rejection of all slavery for Huck. Thus, Jim seems to operate as a part of Huck’s moral compass while ever more confusing him about what society asks of him. In the end, Huck anticlimactically decides to opt out of society in his desire to go to Oklahoma and essentially explore the American Frontier; a place in which Huck believes he can be free from all the pressures that surround his life. Although Huck has emotionally matured, his decision to run away from civilization proves that ultimately he is unable to subscribe to white societal norms but does not know how to combat this issue; nor does it seem that he really wants to. With the novel coming to completion twenty years after the Civil War, Twain stresses that African Americans may be free in a more technical sense of the word but that these individuals still remain chained by a society that refuses to recognize their rightful and equal standing as individuals. Thus, with Jim seemingly the only adult
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