Huckleberry Finn Social Satire Analysis

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Jonathan Swift, a satirist and author who is best known for Gulliver’s Travels, once said: “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” Corrupt and dishonest people exist everywhere in the world, and as people have evolved as a culture, the lack of modest human dignity and shame has also increased and taken a form of its own. Denial and justification of blatant acts of violence and racism are forms of such social systems and behaviors that have come to be. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, such a lack of human decency is expressed through the characterization of people who represent both elements of human folly and the flaws of society. Twain uses social satire to highlight the disparities …show more content…
Caught between his moral principles and the social norms, Huck struggles with his decision to help Jim: “I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’– and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, but they was said” (162). Huck believes his morality leads to “awful thoughts,” and this irony suggests that the culture of racism is long standing and ingrained into society. Sloth and gluttony are human vices: the former pertains to laziness or failure to do what one should do, and the latter pertains to insatiation, which can also be interpreted as selfishness. Twain mocks the South as Huck depreciates himself, declaring that he will “go to hell” for ultimately seeing the humanity in Jim and wanting to help him. Thus, the culture of the South creates an environment that encourages the human vices while simultaneously redefining those vices so that what is morally incorrect is justifiable, and what is ethical is …show more content…
Such a culture encourages and justifies the human vices. Huck’s internal dialogue is full of obvious irony, meant to exaggerate the wrongs of the social norms in the South in the nineteenth century. Twain contrasts Huck’s logical, realistic, and rather human character against the comedic and overstated characters to personify or symbolize the aspects of Southern society which were socially acceptable then, but unethical and unconstitutional now. Huck’s growth demonstrates that commitment to violence and continued ignorance for one’s wrongdoings makes one a lesser

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