Huck Finn's View of Society

In the mid-1800s, many things were seemingly straightforward. Pretty much everyone in society had no problem owning slaves, because slaves supposedly had no importance of their own and, frankly, had no use outside of labor. People also saw fit to do whatever the Bible preached was right, whether it caused harm to others or not, just so that they could justify it to themselves and others that they had good morals. Yet there were some people in this society that did not understand how all of that worked out, because their conscience was telling them otherwise. In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain reflects on society by revealing the main character himself as one of these people. No matter where Huck goes, the society he is supposed to be a part of tells him how he should act and what is “right,” but then their actions give them away as hypocrites, leaving Huck confused and not knowing what is really “right” and what is not. He experiences instances of this with people such as the judge in his town, two feuding families he meets, and a man named Sherburn.

One of the first times Huckleberry sees this contrast between a person and their actions takes place in his own town of St. Petersburg. When the Judge Thatcher and the widow taking care of Huck go and try to get custody of him, the new judge there refuses, claiming that “…courts mustn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it…he’d druther not take a child away from its father” (Twain 23). While this is true, the judge does not look at the circumstances concerning that family. On paper, he is right and is doing what his job requires, but being a judge should also call for him making sure his clients are safe and protected from danger. The next d...

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...nkard was just as defenseless as the cast-out women. Sherburn, though out of anger, has acted like just as much of a coward as the other townspeople, but still claims he is more of a man than them.

In summary, the society in which Huckleberry Finn lives continually confuses him, as the things people say contrast with their actions. He sees this with characters such as the judge in St. Petersburg, the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, and Sherburn, and he finds them to be hypocrites. These incidences lead him to not know what set of beliefs to follow, and this impact on Huck is what the author sets out to display in the novel. His commentary on society through this reflection shows that the morals a society focuses on are many times not practiced by the people that make it up, and do not result in the progress forward that these morals are meant to provide.