Essay paper: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Essay paper: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, there are different themes that Mark Twain tries to bring out that can be found when one keenly goes through the light-hearted and youthful adventure story. Although the novel was written several years after slavery had already been banned in America, the book is set several decades earlier when slavery and racism was still a troubling fact. When one views the book from a different perspective, the writer is simply trying to give out a picture about the conditions of racism and slavery during the period. At the end of the civil war, there was hope that racism wouldn’t be as strained as it was during the war. However, in the novel Twain still depicts the picture of just hope bad the black people still had it during because of the difference in their skin color.

Slavery could have easily been done away with but when the white people living in the south decide to enact laws using the excuse of their safety against the new free black slaves the black people view this as immoral and discriminatory and even opt to act on it. Even though the time setting of the novel was when slavery had already been abolished, the black people living in the South of the state dint have it any easy being black and Twain sets his novel a few decades back to give the readers a clear honest picture of the nature of racism and slavery at the time.

The book is set in the late 19^th century in a rural part of the state along the Mississippi river where the main dominants in the society are the white people who look down at the African American living in the area and treat them with a lot of cruelty and discrimination. The main character in the story is Jim Crow who Twain uses a representation of the African American race (Twain, 13). Jim, who was owned by a white lady known as Miss Watson is trying to flee in order to try and avoid being sold to another owner and risk being permanently separated from his family.The other character in the novel is Huck who is trying to run away from the oppression he gets from his father. The two set off on an adventure towards the north where seemingly slavery had already been banned.

Throughout the book, Twain tries to bring out the social views on racism by using the two characters Huck and Jim. Huck being white seems to be a threat to Jim considering that at any point he may opt to turn Jim in and sell him as a slave. Despite the tight family bond that the two create Jim doesn’t feel as an equal to Huck and more often than not views Huck as a threat to his freedom. This is the reason behind Jim always agreeing with Huck’s ideas of adventure despite any good reason that he may have.

Twain portrays Huck as ignorant to the “rules of the .............