Why Is Huckleberry Finn Still Relevant Today

What are a few things that differentiate people in the world? How do they play a role in the lives of people today? How did they affect the lives of people in the 1800’s? Themes that were present in early life have helped shape the world into what it is today. The presence and evolution of different themes work for either the good or the bad, but sometimes both, in several different aspects of current lives. In Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, three meaningful themes are explored in education, conformity, and morality that are still relevant today. Twain works the theme of education into numerous places throughout the entirety of Huckleberry Finn. Right off the bat, Twain makes it clear that education plays a major role in the novel when he says, “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot” (Twain Notice). Twain shows through the novel that uneducated people are often tricked by some of the simplest things.

Twain says, “Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people – whereas you’re just as brave, and no braver” (110). Twain hits right on the head with this statement in Huckleberry Finn. Throughout the novel, Twain shows the cowardly nature of people. He uses the mob mentality to show this. In the situation where the mob wants to lynch Colonel Sherburn, Sherburn asks them why they do not lynch murderers. He says that it is because they are afraid the murderer’s friends will come after them in the dark, when they are not looking. The reason the mob does not lynch Sherburn is because they cannot step away from conforming to what the rest of the crowd does. They do not come after him in the dark, nor do they when he is not