The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Jayce Blomquist

Ms. Read

HAL

20 October 2013

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain there are many uses of satire. He uses the main character Huck to go through multiple experiences that show the way the world has trained him contrasted with the way he thinks life should really be. One of the reasons he used that was to show an individual’s personal conscience is better than that of the society. He wants to show the readers that they shouldn’t get caught up in the ways of the world.

Huck was floating down the river freeing a Jim, a slave, from Miss Watson. They were floating in a raft along a river and had been through quite a bit together. Jim had gotten bit by a snake, they saw robbers, they’ve seen dead men and battled superstitions. After they had done all this Huck had a lot of time to think as they cruised down the river which always ends up with negative thoughts (Twain 92). Here’s the irony, Huck feels bad that he has stolen someones property. Miss Watson had ingrained in Hucks mind that stealing is bad, which it is, but not when it’s another human being. The time of this society taught Huck that Slaves weren’t people, but here he had gone through adventures, that Tom himself has dreamed of having, with Jim and he had never once thought of Jim as less than an equal. Sometimes He even looks up to Jim and takes his advice. Being unaffected by anyone he no doubt would have been fine with his decisions to free Jim because he was a human being in a rough spot, not property.

Huck has been moved from place to place so much he hasn’t had the opportunity to take root somewhere and fall to the corrupt ideas of this time. Leaving Huck free to act in his own terms.

Huck still has the ignorance of a child which allows him to act purely on human instincts and not like most people in the south.

In the event of the Grangerfords and the Shepardsons, the feud is an example of satire. Only the oldest members of the families...