How Does Huck Finn Represent Morality

1135 Words5 Pages

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel written by Mark Twain, is often referred to as a great American novel (Goodreads) due to it’s presence of the culture of the United States prior to the Civil War. Not only does this piece of literature demonstrate the mentality of the American society in the midst of slavery, but it also uses the symbolism of Jackson’s Island and the Mississippi river, one of the world’s largest river systems, to emphasize Twain’s message about morality and religion. Although perhaps not initially apparent, Twain tries to convince readers that civilization masks morality and that hypocrisy often lies within religion through Huck and Jim’s journey down the Mississippi River and their various encounters with other characters …show more content…

This citation represents that not once does Buck realize that killing his supposed opposition for no apparent reason is wrong, he believes it’s the right thing to do because he was raised to believe so. In addition, Twain decided to add the incident between Colonel Sherburn and Boggs to help convey his message about morality. When the townspeople march towards Sherburn’s house after Boggs’ death, Sherburn explains to the crowd how “the average man’s a coward” (Chapter 21, page 140) because not one man in the whole swarm of people would ever dare kill Sherburn without everyone there supporting him. Twain is trying to prove that people don’t stick up for what they believe is truly right when they’re surrounded by tons of people who think differently. It is quite clear that Twain uses the innocent generation of the Grangerfords as well as the disturbance between Sherburn and Boggs to prove that when surrounded by society, their conscience gets overpowered. Finally, one night as Jim and Huck were at the head of Jackson’s island, they saw a two-story house in which they decided to examine. In the far corner on the floor, they found a man whom appeared …show more content…

For instance, he uses Huck and Jim’s journey towards the North on the Mississippi river along with various characters like their family and new friends in order to state that morality and religion are two concepts that need to individually be present towards humans. In other words, ethics and faith can serve a greater purpose when they are not affected by civilization or by the mentality of society because this leads to inhumanity and hypocrisy. Besides, why would the saying “stand up for what you believe in” or ‘practice what you preach” exist if they had nothing to stand against,

Open Document