The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a sophisticated novel written by Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows several uses of written styles to portray the society back then as accurately as possible. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses humour, satire, and his characters in order to create an accurate portrayal and condemnation of religion, education, and freedom in his society.
Mark Twain was able to use humour correctly in his book. The book opens with the use of humour- and it was clearly shown in the novel, as it opens with humour. Mark Twain decided to make one of the opening characters Christian- but also made her own a slave- which is against the bible. This portrayal of humour is likely to portray how hypocritic the society was back then- and how it was done effectively through humour. Just a minute later, Huck asks the Widow to smoke but the widow condemns him from smoking since it wasn’t good for him- “she said it was a mean practice and it wasn’t clean”. However, Huck points out that the widow herself smokes and Later on in the book, Twain was able to throw in the Grangerfords’ and the Shepherdsons’ feud and how ridiculous it was. Back in the day, it was known that a feud was supposed to cause a lot of trouble. Twain decides to show this in a way that makes the reader think, “This is ridiculous, they’re Christian- this is supposed to be worshipping time, not time to worry about a feud that nobody probably remembers.” The Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons show that they go as far as bringing guns into the church just to settle their obnoxious feud. Later in the book, Aunt Sally mistakes Huck for a relative. In this scheme, Huck tells Aunt Sally (Mrs. Phelps) that there was a steamboat accident and a black man died because of it. Mrs. Phelps later responds with, “lucky, that no one got hurt.” This shows racism in the society by showing that black lives didn’t really matter back in the 1800s. Such obnoxious and hypocritic actions shows how society was back then, and Twain can show this effectively through just those small events here and there.
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Twain also uses satire effectively to show society in the past. A big example of this is how superstition is used (shown through Jim). Superstition is used through Jim by giving his character a lot of belief in superstitions- one of them being the hairball superstition. Jim believes that if you give him a quarter, he is able to talk to the hairball. He also believed that if you had a hairy chest, you would be blessed with good luck and fortune later. These small actions show how society was back then- people used to believe these small superstitions and fall for them frequently. There are also examples of religious superstition in the novel- Miss Watson was supposed to be religious and tried to teach Huck about religion throughout the early part of the novel; she also attempted to school Huck and teach him how to behave. However, this was ironic since Miss Watson owned a slave. This goes against Christian belief- it is against the religion to own a slave. An example towards the end of the book was about the feud- both parties decided to bring guns into church. In church, they’re supposed to be worshipping, not worrying about a feud that nobody knows the origin of.
Twain finally uses his characters to portray an accurate representation of society in the past. Huck was the main character of this novel and everyone can see what the society was like through Huck’s point of view. This was shown through several things- but this was mainly shown through Huck’s travels. Through these adventures, Huck encounters several things that show how society was back then. A big event was where Huck/the duke/the king had to make Jim look different so that he doesn’t get captured as a runaway slave. Being captured as a runaway slave was always at stake for Jim, so he had to continuously hide himself/disguise himself so that he doesn’t get captured. Jim can show how free the society is back in the day. This is shown several times throughout the novel- such as when Jim ran away as a slave and had to disguise himself to prevent getting caught. If a white person decided to run away, such precautions wouldn’t be necessary.
Overall, Twain was able to portray the religion, education, and freedom in his society by using humour, satire, and his characters. This was done through several occasions and small events that showed hints throughout the novel. However, Twain was successfully able to portray these traits shown- they were shown clearly in the end.
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