Huckleberry Finn Racism Essay

Mark Twain is a very famous and respected writer who is often criticized for his racist language and accused of being racist himself, especially with a particular novel. This novel is called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and is about a runaway slave and a young boy’s adventures as they attempt to escape and the young boy, Huck, struggling between his own morals and society’s racist attitude. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a racist novel because of Huck’s morals representing Twain’s own, Twain’s use of realism in the book, and his positive characterization of slave characters, like Jim. In this novel, Huck has his own moral opinion of Jim as a slave, which represents Twain’s own morals in his real life. In the book, Huck is

In this novel, there are certain characters that say things that are derogatory to blacks. For example, in the novel by Mark Twain on page 216, a character, Aunt Sally, learns of a steamboat explosion and proceeds to ask, “Good gracious! Anybody hurt?” She is then answered with, “No’m, killed a [n].” This dialect shows the mindset of people in that time period and it could easily offend someone if they take it literally. Though, Twain only put this conversation in the novel to show that people did not think of slaves as people at all and how ridiculous it was. He did not mean this literally or in his own words. He did not believe this and it was not meant to be written as true in the novel.

As a very respected author, it is clear that Mark Twain is not racist, despite his somewhat racist and vulgar language, because of Huck’s morals representing his own, Twain’s important use of realism in the novel, and his positive character buildup of Jim. Twain’s reason for using the language in the book is to portray his theme of overcoming society’s expectations, (racism at the time), and creating your own based on your