Religious Hypocrisy In Huck Finn

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Slavery and the religious hypocrisy surrounding it is a major subject of criticism by Mark Twain. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain depicts Southern society through the eyes of a youth named Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain satirizes slavery and religion in the antebellum South through irony, exaggeration, and understatement to spotlight the intolerant and hypocritical Southern society in Huck Finn.
Twain uses the characters of Widow Douglas and Ms.Watson to satirize the typical Southern churchgoer through irony. He depicts the two sisters as extremely religious women who possess great knowledge of the bible. The Widow teaches Huck “ about Moses and the Bulrushers” to proselytize to him (12). Ms. Watson tries to correct Hucks uncivilized …show more content…

Huck paints a picture of an overly ecstatic audience while the preacher is doing his job, “they sung and shouted and flung themselves down the straw, just crazy and wild” (142). The people's reaction towards the sermon is exaggerated. Crazy and wild aren’t words churchgoers would usually use to describe their religious practices. Huck's description of the sermon and its audience is reminiscent of a musical concert. During all the commotion, The King goes “charging up onto the platform” (142). He tells a extremely exaggerated and made up story about his miserable life and proceeds to then “burst into tears” along with everybody else (143). The townspeople even “ wanted him to live in their houses”(143). The King’s lie disguised as a sob story manages to win over the hearts of the townspeople and earns him “ eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents” (143). In their wild fervor, the audience is easily swayed by a con-man. Their propensity for getting caught up in the moment and lack of caution towards anything relating to religion makes them gullible and easily …show more content…

He employs exaggeration to show how the church goers are not cautious towards their religion and do not analyze their religious practices on a deeper level. He utilizes understatement to show how African Americans are the bottom of the food chain in the antebellum South. Mark Twain successfully satirizes the institution of slavery and its relation with the institution of religion in Huck

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