Lies In Huckleberry Finn Analysis

In his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Huck), Mark Twain satirizes falsehood, and dishonesty through Huck’s vernacular voice in order to show the ignorance of the shameful southern culture where the values consist of greed and manipulation. Although Twain criticizes this seemingly mendacious behavior of lying, he argues that there are circumstances in which deception is acceptable. He adopts a typical southerner mentality through Huck’s genuine voice for the purpose of expressing to the audience that lying is appropriate in situations where the lie gets someone out of trouble, protects somebody’s feelings, or doesn’t cause any damage to others, and it is inappropriate when it has immoral intentions or it is unnecessary. Throughout …show more content…
This emphasizes the growth in Huck as he becomes mature and figures out for himself the skills of successful fabrication, distortion, and exaggeration. Huckleberry is a homeless and uneducated Missouri boy who tends to find himself “up a stump” more often than he would like to. Huck is only able to keep himself and Jim surviving through telling lies. The lying notably begins when Huck was being abused by his father, Pap, and he needed to escape from all the trouble Pap was giving him. Huck actually fakes his own death which is such an extreme lie and hurts the feelings of many people including Ms. Watson and the Widow Douglas who ironically didn’t even enjoy Huck’s company, but this is the start of Huck’s adventures and Huck will have to keep lying to avoid punishments. He especially has to learn how to lie when he befriends Jim because Jim is wanted by every white person since it is obvious by the color of his skin that he is a runaway slave. Huck recognizes the difficulty of protecting Jim and he …show more content…
Twain uses the duke and the king to portray characters that are selfish and inconsiderate. Huck dishonestly sneaks out of the house with Tom to warn the conmen. Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally are very innocent and loving people, they treat Tom and Huck with such kind hearts. Tom and Huck risk ruining their trusting relationship with Sally and Silas in order to save the duke and king from being tarred and feathered. Huck contemplates, “I didn’t believe anybody was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn’t hurry up and give them one they’d get into trouble sure. (241) Huck’s lie had the potential to save them from the public humiliation and physical discomfort, but they arrived too