How Does Huck Finn Satiriize Freedom

Improved Essays
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain satirizes freedom by using indirect satire.
Huck and Jim both yearn for freedom. Huck wants to be free of petty manners, societal values, and of his abusive father. Maybe more than anything, Huck wants to be free such that he can think independently and do what his heart tells him to do. Similarly, Jim wants to be free of bondage so that he can return to his wife and children.
Huck feels bad and low when he returns to the raft, but reasons that he would feel just as bad had he done “right” and turned Jim in. He figures it is easier to do wrong than right, and that the outcome of doing either is the same, and so decides to “always do whichever come handiest at the time.”
Given that Huck would feel

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Author Vladimir Nabokov once declared, “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.” In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Twain teaches his readers about the shortcomings of nineteenth century society, while entertaining them as well. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn focuses on a young, uncivilized boy named Huck Finn and his adventures along the Mississippi River with a slave named Jim. Throughout the novel, Huck learns more about society and himself through his wild experiences. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain satirizes religious hypocrites, political figures, and the Ku Klux Klan, revealing serious flaws of nineteenth century…

    • 102 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was…”(Twain, 203). Twain’s character Huck was a disappointment. Huck doesn’t fully understand the purpose of being free and how it would affect Jim. He cares less for Jim’s desires due to the fact that he doesn’t completely comprehend them. Smiley argues, “As with all bad endings, the problem really lies at the beginning, and at the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn neither Huck nor Twain takes Jim’s desire for freedom at all seriously; that is, they do not accord it the respect that a man’s passion deserves” (Smiley).…

    • 988 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    “The only way to deal with an unfree world is too become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Albert Camus explains in his famous quote how everyone at some time or another has their own quest to find freedom in their lives. For people, freedom is getting away from the world and going to a secret place to think about their thoughts and actions. In order to reach freedom they had to make radical changes in their life and begin to bravely do things on their own and make decisions quickly when they are in a difficult situation. In Mark Twain’s famous novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Huck and Jim are both on their own quest of freedom to become freemen.…

    • 170 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Huck Finn Racist Quotes

    • 1077 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Is Huckleberry Finn a racist text? Huckleberry Finn is a book written in the 1840s about a young white boy and a black man who travel down the Mississippi trying to get the black man to freedom. Ever since this book has came out there has been a huge controversy over it and how this story is portrayed. The main problem parents had over this book was the use of the “N” word and how it would make black children feel in the classroom while reading this book. But overall it sends a good message if you look past all the racist undertones.…

    • 1077 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout Heart of Darkness, there are several references to blindness, darkness, and light. When literal blindness, darkness, light, and sight are introduced in a literary work, figurative seeing and blindness are often involved, as in this novel. Captain Charles Marlow sets “into the depths of darkness” in order to quench his thirst for knowledge about an unnamed river in central Africa (18). However, Captain Marlow loses this flavor of childhood innocence as he witnesses the death of his helmsman as a result of an attack by African Natives and the death of Mr. Kurtz, whose overwhelming personal need to become wealthy leads to his isolation from those closest to him, such as his fiancée, in Europe. After the steamboat is lead “swiftly out…

    • 1294 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Freedom of expression is a uniquely American tradition, at least to the extent we have here. Amy Witherbee, a researcher who studies how democracy and censorship go hand and hand said “At the core of censorship is always a parallel belief in the ability of an idea to alter lives and change nations. The challenge is to let those ideas wreak their havoc, and trust in our capacity as the citizens of a democracy to make of the damage something better than what was there before. If, on the other hand, we close down the arguments, retract the controversies, and avoid the challenges, then what we have is not a real democracy, but a nation afraid to lead itself” (Witherbee Par. 12). The First amendment is in place to protect citizens from censorship.…

    • 1855 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It may seem as if social pressures are just a problem of the new digital age. In reality, the stress to conform has always been a prominent matter that many generations have faced. The main character in The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain ponders the age old question of whether to be a follower, or make one’s own path. Huckleberry Finn enters the novel as a confused boy battling problems of adolescence such as depression and angst. With Jim as his guide Huck forms his personal opinions on many social and political issues.…

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jim and Huck both wanted freedom, but they didn’t want the same kind of freedom. Jim wanted to be free from slavery and Huck wanted to be free from the people. Throughout the book it shows how hard they both worked for their freedom and how they got it . The book is amazing and gives very great detail about how they got to their freedom and I am going to give you examples and explain how they got their freedom. The reason I chose freedom is because there is a lot of it throughout the book and freedom was hard to get back then.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain comments on many subjects such as race, religion, slavery, education and society as a whole. Throughout the book there are certain very serious instance, which occurred amidst all of the satirizing, but even in those serious instances we can find remnants of satire. The book has a consistent theme of questioning societal morals, as well as Huck’s individual struggle to find his morals. In the reading Satire: Spirit and Art by George A. Test, stated that “the emotions that give rise to satire are…the least admirable of human emotions- anger, malice, hatred, indignation”. While doing this satire “evokes [parallel] emotions… shame, anger, guilt, anxiety (pg. 1).…

    • 1360 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Source A), Twain satirizes many different aspects of the world such as family feuds, racism, and the human nature. Even though his father had slaves when he was a child, he opposed…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During my sophomore year of high school, we studied The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We noted that conscience and moral decisions could be influenced by law, society, and experience. Huckleberry Finn had to make important decisions based on the world he lived in which made it incredibly difficult. He either had the break the law to help Jim the runaway slave or stay true to societal expectations and deny his help. This simple character expresses the complexities of the world we live in today.…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Some young children grow up fast and others grow slowly. If children grow up in an arduous situation or are constantly exposed to tragic accidents and hard, life-changing decisions, they will mature much quicker than normal. They end up losing their childhood innocence far too fast. Their decisions in matters of the head and heart reflect this. In Mark Twain’s…

    • 1057 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America is well known for the place of freedom and prosperity; it holds a various amount of lifestyles lived by different people. In the novel of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the two main characters, Huck and Jim portray the American Dream through their attempt of freedom. The novel was written two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. Even then, America was still struggling with racism and the aftermath of slavery.…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Longhorne Clemens, under the pen name Mark Twain, is described as “an extraordinary work….. it is a great novel” by New York Times. The genre of this great American novel is often referred to as satire. This novel is about a young boy named Huck struggling to overcome the internal problem of what his conscience tells him what's right and what society tells him what is right. There are many themes in this book, which makes it leave a long lasting impression on the person who is reading it.…

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Huck and Jim’s adventures express multiple sub-themes to the major theme a journey to freedom. This novel is based in 1830’s and 1840’s America, where slavery is still a big issue. Huckleberry Finn is living with a widow who is trying to civilize him, all is well until his father, who he calls Pap, comes into town and is abusive to Huck because he is learning to read and write. Pap perceives this as Huck thinking he is better than him.…

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays