societhf Values of Society

Huckleberry Finn – Values of Society

Often in satire, writers will use the internal conflict of a character to symbolically criticize the values and morality of society. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses the main character of Huckleberry Finn and the conflict between his personality and social conscience to criticize society. In this clash between his deformed conscience and sound heart, his heart is victorious. This conflict reflects the major themes within this work of slavery, racism, and "civilized" society. With a thorough examination of this conflict and insight into these facets of Huck these facts become apparent to the reader.

It is clear that throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is a character bearing a deformed conscious. Huck's distorted sense of morals is a direct result of his dysfunctional upbringing. To better understand this let us first examine the background of Huck that Twain gives the reader. "The Widow Douglas she took me for her son" (1). An insightful reader can see from this that Huck is not receiving a mainstream childhood. Huck's father is a drunk, his mother is dead, and he is forced to live with a widowed woman and her self-righteous sister. Given such conditions it easy to see why Huck rejects the morals of a society that has rejected him in the sense that he is not protected from his father. Huck's distorted sense of morals is also a product of selectively accepting precepts that have been instilled into him based on his own intelligence. In a humorous passage Huck describes his feelings towards religion. "Then she [Miss Watson] told me all about the bad place [hell], and I said I wished I was there...all I wanted was a change" (2). Clearly Huck misunderstands the tenants of Christianity yet his motives were not malicious. Huck was merely expressing his desire to free himself of his current situation. He sees beyond the values of a hypocritical society and chooses to follow his own path. These misunderstandings of, and weak feelings of responsibility toward his faith have a distorted impact on his conscience. In variance to the religious beliefs of Miss Watson are the morals of his father.