Dishonesty In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain

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. Throughout the novel, Huck learns

Jim lies to Huck about the dead body in the house because Jim knows that Huck would be heartbroken when he found out that it was his own Pap that was dead. It took a lot of strength from Jim to act like nothing bad happened and to lie right to his best friend’s face. As Huck called out to the person who looked as if they were asleep, Jim revealed to Huck, "It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face—it's too gashly.” (61) Huck also tries not to hurt Jim’s feelings. As they pass Cairo, Jim exclaims, “Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.” (100) At this moment, Huck doesn’t feel the same way about Jim that is why Huck can’t say that Jim is also his best friend. Huck just stays quiet so he doesn’t make Jim feel upset. Ironically, Jim calls Huck “de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.” (101) Little does Jim know, Huck is thinking about breaking his promise and betraying Jim by writing a letter to Ms. Watson that would let her know of Jim’s whereabouts. Twain shows the readers that it is hard to disappoint people that are important to you and it is a natural instinct to protect friends from the biting

White lies to Twain are normal and harmless. For example Tom told many lies and exaggerations about the adventures that the gang was going to have but those lies didn’t hurt anybody. Additionally, the multiple instances where Huck changes his name and background are not harmful lies because he doesn’t do it to deceive, he does it to gain insight and knowledge while keeping himself undercover. Ms. Judith Loftus questioned Huck, “What’s your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?- or what is it? Then Huck confesses that he is admittedly a boy. Ms. Loftus doesn’t punish or scold him because it was only a small lie that didn’t even do any harm to her. In fact, she gave Huck advice on how to act like a girl more believably. Ms. Loftus says, “And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don’t clap them