Language and Dialect in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain's use of language and dialect in the book "Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn" helped him to bring about the overall feel that he
conveyed throughout the book, allowing him to show Huck Finn's attitudes
and beliefs concerning the nature of education, slavery, and family values.
When the story begins, Huck is seen as a young boy who is not very
educated nor wishes to be. He does not seem to care very much for the
attention that is given to him by the Widow Douglas, who had taken him in
for her son, and her sister, Miss Watson. Huck's moral values were not only
the product of his ignorance, but there is relation seen between Huck's
attitude and the attitude of his father when Huck is confronted by him.
Huck's father is disgusted at the way that Huck seems to be becoming more
and more civilized. He states "...they say you can read and write. You
think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't?"
Perhaps this statement shows disgust in Huck through not following the
moral values of his father, or perhaps this is just merely jealousy on his
father's part. Huck's father warns Huck about going to school any more, yet
Huck goes anyway, showing great willpower in the character of Huck in that
he was gaining an education that he never really wanted in the first place,
but soon came to realize that it was something actually useful, and in the
fact that he was disobeying his father's orders.
Huck's feelings about slavery are shown when he helps Jim, Miss
Watson's slave, to escape. Huck's constant statement that "Jim talks like
he is white inside" shows that Huck was unique amongst the society in which
he lived in the fact that he saw beneath the color of a person's skin and
saw the person that was truly there. Jim seems to be the only person that
Huck can trust other than Tom Saywer, Huck's best friend. Huck Finn felt
that slavery was a cruel injustice because he had gotten to know Jim and
found out that there was more to him than just being a slave. Huck had
found that Jim was a human being just like himself. Through these ideas,
Mark Twain subtly conveyed his own feelings about slavery that existed in
the south by using Huck as an example.
Mark Twain not only challenged the topics of education and slavery,
but he also criticized the very society in which he lived. Social criticism
appears in Twain's picture of the feuding Grangerfords and Shepherdsons,
two families upon which Huck stumbles while on his travels. The two
families show the foolheartedness of the pre-civil war society that existed
in Twain's lifetime. Twain tried to convey the point that society had no
need for civil feuds such as the one illustrated, or even the American
civil war.
Through Mark Twain's use of language, he succeeded in showing the
thoughts and beliefs of Huck Finn and the world that surrounded him. He
accomplished this by showing these beliefs through Huck's realistic
attitude, creating the framework to tackle the then-present and
controversial issues of slavery and nationalistic values that accompanied
peoples' thoughts on the subject.
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