Irony in Huck Finn Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain takes place in the mid 1830’s to the mid 1840’s when slavery was still prevalent in the south. Although the book was set in the 1830’s to the 1840’s, it was not published until 1884, after slavery had been abolished in 1865. Slavery is an important topic of the book to focus on because it shaped the way people thought. A way that Twain shows the truths of slavery in the book is through irony. A specific scene that he used irony in was when Huck was helping Jim escape from slavery, yet Huck judged Jim for wanting to free the rest of his family which is ironic.
Jim and Huck share their stories and develop an interesting relationship during their adventures. Twain presents Huck’s moral challenges throughout his adventures with a runaway slave to display a non-racist view during a time of slavery. In the midst of the novel, moments of the ingrained racism Huck has in this time of slavery shine through, yet frame Huck as the least racist character in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck agonizes over his decision to help Jim escape slavery and grows increasingly conflicted as his friendship with Jim grows and flourishes. While they are traveling, Jim explains to Huck his plans for when he is finally a free man.
The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain received many critics interpreting the novel differently. In the novel, there is a boy named Huck, who is uncivilized and white, goes on an adventure with a slave named Jim, who was running away from his owner. Throughout the journey, Huck develops his own mortality about slaves and society, which is different from society’s. This novel uses the “N” word which is why some consider it racists. The initial reception of the novel was that it’s racists because of the usage of the “N” word and the stereotypes, currently the book has mixed views and many places has banned it, and I believe that this book is not racists.
Furthermore, through her use of racial tension between the white and blacks, she accurately depicts the understanding gap between blacks and whites during that time in the deep south. Finally, through her use of class differences between an educated and influence black man and the black and white community shows the effects of the Jim Crow laws and how the rest of society follows them, while Dr. Copeland wants to challenge them. Overall, with the aspects of place, racial tension, and class differences, the novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter can be characterized as a southern novel. Richard
The Southern United States remained virtually unchanged socially after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Former slaves were employed by previous owners with low-paying sharecropping, and freedmen could not vote. Jim Crow laws soon placed newly freed slaves back into a pseudo-slavery, keeping many in the south with mandatory Apprenticeship Laws. Mark Twain subtly comments on these issues in the American society, largely using satire as a way to display the failure of Reconstruction in the South. Society in Huck Finn displays racism towards Jim, with many characters’ actions and attitudes demonstrating overt racism.
After the brutal history of the American Civil War, the aftermath of racism was still a major issue. During the 1940-1950s, the South adopted a law system that allowed white supremacists to legally commit violent acts on previously enslaved African Americans. These laws, known as Jim Crow laws, enforced segregation, but were not legalized in the northern states. Unfortunately, many white citizens still socially accepted segregation and made it difficult for African Americans to live equally among them. In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, an African American family known as the Youngers experience “societal implications” of segregation in Chicago, Illinois, and the threats as well as harassments that followed.
Right off the bat starting with Tom’s Gang, Twain satirizes these romanticist tropes relentlessly. Thus, by not following romanticism, Twain presents slavery and racism wholly, as it was without any rose-tinted glasses. This is a significant factor in the novel, and one of the reasons such controversy has stirred around this perceived issue. In the same sense, Twain embraces realism, attempting to give a true to life representation of the world Huck and Jim live in. Towards the end, plans to free Jim have been labeled by critics as a return to minstrelsy, but under the surface they represent the systematic oppression of freed slaves and African Americans.
In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass narrates in detail the oppressions he went through as a slave before winning his freedom. In the narrative, Douglass gives a picture about the humiliation, brutality, and pain that slaves go through. We can evidently see that Douglass does not want to describe only his life, but he uses his personal experiences and life story as a tool to rise against slavery. He uses his personal life story to argue against common myths that were used to justify the act of slavery. Douglass invalidated common justification for slavery like religion, economic argument and color with his life story through his experiences torture, separation, and illiteracy, and he urged for the end of slavery.
Although the society’s standards and his father are repressing, Huck has his own inner voice and would listen to them. That’s why when he meets Jim, a running away slave, Huck helps to save Jim and runs away with him. By the society’s standard, running away slave is intolerable and has to be caught and punished. However, Huck acts against the society’s standard even though he knows it’s wrong to help Jim run away. There exists so much racism in the society.
According to Stowe “enslaving of the African race is a clear violation of the great law which commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves” (Stowe 623). Later,it gains a wide prop up and recognition from two other American critics Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) and Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) who concede it as an influential book in American history, concluding slavery as evil both in its nature and practice.On the other hand,Uncle Tom’s Cabinalso has its share of brickbatas William Lloyd Garrison thinks that the novel is not an actualportrayal of slavery and,James Baldwindefines it as a “very bad novel, having its self-righteous, virtuous sentimentality, much in common with Little Women” (quoted in Gillespie 198), a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). During the