Many writers throughout history have attempted to influence society throughout their era. However, few writers possessed the ability to look into the human psyche and controversies like Samuel Clemens. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, most commonly known as Mark Twain, began his career as a humorist author, but towards the final years of his life, wrote satirical works of the hypocrisies and foolishness of mankind following the deaths of his wife and daughters. However, apart from the issues with mankind, Clemens also harbors a negative perspective towards the absence of morality in humans as well as the proliferation and blind acceptance of religion – most notably, Christianity, which he desires to change. Such assessments can be collectively observed
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“It is a major point in the book and film, a restatement of that verity. Jim does not save Huck in Huckleberry Finn, losing him finally to Tom Sawyer, but he saves Mark Twain in the twentieth century and is floating him still in the twenty-first,” proclaims critic Schmitz (117). It was the interactions between Jim and Huck that, in turn, depicted Twain as a moral human being and made him so successful. For example, in the story, Huck contemplates whether or not to continue saving Jim because it was a crime to attempt to save an escaped slave. However, Huck remembers how kind Jim was to him so he does not care about the preordained laws of the south and decides to help Jim anyway. This can be foreseen in the story when Huck says “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (217). This, of course, is an important event in the story because it is when Huck and most importantly, the author, recognize Jim as an actual human being. Apart from morality, this also relates to Twain’s often negative view of religion since it was the pious Christians that preached of “manners” and “civility” to Huck yet these very people were also the owners of slaves (Miss Watson is a good example of this).This can be ascertained when Twain states, as quoted by Schmitz, "We know it is a matter of association and sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies" (119). In the end, associations with religion and what is “right” and “wrong” boils down to a matter of opinion. Pre-Civil War America had laws that allowed for the slavery of other human beings and imposed severe punishments for those willing to defy them, and, according to Twain, these laws were merely popular opinions obtained through the association and sympathy of
“It is a major point in the book and film, a restatement of that verity. Jim does not save Huck in Huckleberry Finn, losing him finally to Tom Sawyer, but he saves Mark Twain in the twentieth century and is floating him still in the twenty-first,” proclaims critic Schmitz (117). It was the interactions between Jim and Huck that, in turn, depicted Twain as a moral human being and made him so successful. For example, in the story, Huck contemplates whether or not to continue saving Jim because it was a crime to attempt to save an escaped slave. However, Huck remembers how kind Jim was to him so he does not care about the preordained laws of the south and decides to help Jim anyway. This can be foreseen in the story when Huck says “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (217). This, of course, is an important event in the story because it is when Huck and most importantly, the author, recognize Jim as an actual human being. Apart from morality, this also relates to Twain’s often negative view of religion since it was the pious Christians that preached of “manners” and “civility” to Huck yet these very people were also the owners of slaves (Miss Watson is a good example of this).This can be ascertained when Twain states, as quoted by Schmitz, "We know it is a matter of association and sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies" (119). In the end, associations with religion and what is “right” and “wrong” boils down to a matter of opinion. Pre-Civil War America had laws that allowed for the slavery of other human beings and imposed severe punishments for those willing to defy them, and, according to Twain, these laws were merely popular opinions obtained through the association and sympathy of