Themes of Morality and Racism in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a novel full of racism and hypocrisy of the society that we know. Huck continually faces the many challenges of what to do in tough situations dealing with racism and what the society wants him to do. With the novel being written in the first person point of view gives us insightful information into the challenges the Huck is facing and gives us a look into Huck’s head. Huck uses many different techniques to deal with his problems and he gets through them with the end result always being what Huck believes is right. Through Huck’s perspective we see how he deals with all of the racism and hypocrisy of society to form him into the character that he is and to serve the themes of the novel.

Huck in many instances has a conflict from the racism that society has put forth and he has difficulty deciphering what is right by his heart and what is right by society’s standards. In the novel you find Huck lying on many occasions to help protect his slave friend Jim. In one instance Huck poses as a girl in a town down the river to see the response to Huck’s fake death and Jim’s disappearance. Huck finds out that “Before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim… The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there’s a reward out for him-three hundred dollars” (86). With a reward being out for Jim’s capture Huck knows that people are going to be looking for Jim. Huck quickly created a story to protect his slave friend Jim from the feared slave catchers. Huck hides his identity numerous times to protect his friend Jim from danger and possibly death. It takes an extraordinary high moral person to take these kinds of personal risks to prote...

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... could not stand such indecency and it bothered him to see that. "It made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so." (183). Huck in those passages shows a special person, almost a hero, that was uncanny for the time period, showing emotions towards slaves where the rest of the society either didn’t think anything of it or just thought of slaves as property with no feelings.

With all the issues of right and wrong, Huck tries to do the right thing even though most people in the society around him wouldn’t view them as correct. Huck breaking Jim out of slavery and Huck’s feelings of sickness of slave trading, give the reader insightful information on the characters perspective. Through Huck’s perspective we see how he deals with all of the racism and hypocrisy of society to form him into the character that he is and to serve the themes of the novel.

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