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Huck Finn Dbq Analysis

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In the book "The Adventures if Huckleberry Finn", Mark Twain's writing mirrors the society and problems it had in that time. This book promotes seeing African-Americans as people, which is absolutely groundbreaking and unheard-of in the time it was written, right after the Civil War. Throughout the book,, Huck has a complete change in his feelings towards Jim, starting with his highly influenced young mind, only able to view Jim as a slave, all the way to seeing Jim as a father-figure who can protect and provide for him. Although Huck tries to see Jim as a friend and fatherly-figure, society's beliefs don't allow him to see Jim as anything but a slave. Huck lives in a time and place where African-Americans are legally not human, so that influences Huck's brain, causing him to see Jim as a slave. For example, when Jim and Huck become separated in the fog, Huck plays a rude trick. He says to Jim that they were never lost and there was no fog. Jim gives a whole speech to Huck, explaining how Huck made him feel like trash. Huck believing that Jim wasn't smart enough to figure the lie out, as well as lying to him at all, shows that Huck feels as though he is above Jim intellectually. (Doc D). Another time Huck treated Jim as a space was when he was thinking …show more content…

Society makes Huck believe that that is correct, and that is all he believes, until he travels along the river with a slave whom he has befriended named Jim. Initially, Huck sees Jim as only a slave, but that relationship builds until the overriding relationship is achieved, in which Jim is a father-figure in the eyes of Huck. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" made history because of its promoting of white people viewing African Americans as equal to themselves, which wasn't common in that day and age. Overall, Huck's outweighing view of Jim is as a patriarch, a sort of dad he never got to

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