Cruelty in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Recommended: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Character analysis

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain illustrates prevalent themes of society in the early 1800’s, as well as in today’s society. Huckleberry Finn is the son of an abusive father and his mother is no longer alive. He decides he is going to leave “sivilization” and travel down the river. He encounters many people along the way, but the most important is Jim, a runaway slave from Huck’s hometown. Huck realizes early on that “human beings can be awful cruel to one another”(Twain174). Most of the people that Huck and Jim encounter on their journey down the river are inhumane to other people. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain opines that human beings treat their peers with cruelty through seeking attention, greed, and self preservation.
Abusive fathers show great cruelty toward their children. Pap is heartless toward Huck even though he is his son. He is very greedy and isn’t worried about Huck’s physical or mental health, he only wants Huck’s money. Pap and Huck are family, but yet Pap is still both mentally and physically abusive toward his son. Huck is scared of his father while he is drunk, he states that “by and by Pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all over welts”(Twain18). Even though Pap and Huck are father and son Pap is still inhumane to Huck simply out of greed.
The way people treated slaves or even the way they treated free black men was exceptionally cruel. Jim had to constantly stay on the run to deal with the brutality of it. Tom Sawyer even played Jim by tricking him into thinking he was still a runaway slaves when really he was a free man. Miss Watson “set him free in her will”(Twain277), yet Tom still pretends he is not a free man. Even Huck plays several tricks on him throughou...

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...portrays the cruelty of man’s inhumanity to man in the novel, but does little about it, for we still live in an inhumane world today in 2014.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: C.L. Webster & Co.,1885. Print.
Martin, Jay. “American Civilization threatens to destroy Huck”. Harvest of Change: American Literature,1865-1914(1967):Rpt. in reading on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. Katie de Koster. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1994:105-110.
Nyirubugara, Oliver. “CHAPTER II VIOLENCE, CRUELTY AND BRUTALITY” MARK TWAIN’S SATIRICAL APPROACH TO MID- 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN SOCIETY AS DEPICTED IN THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBNERRY FINN. University of Bangui, 2001. Web. March 14, 2014.
Lunsford,Pat. “The Effects of Child Abuse on Society” The Effects of Child Abuse on Society. Yahoo Contributor Network, Oct 1, 2008, Web, April 1, 2014.

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