Huckleberry Finn Irony Analysis

Though society told him how to act and what to believe, he continuously did what he believed to be right. There are three key lessons I believe to be leading causes of Hucks growth. The first lesson is how fallacious slavery was. The first important lesson that took Huck from boyhood to manhood, would be the realization that Slavery was inhuman.

An example of this is, “we hanged our harps upon the willow in the midst thereof” (Douglass 286). This piece of text is Douglass saying that once you’ve been a slave there is no way to forget everything that he experienced because of how horrifying it was. With this quote it helps to prove his credibility because he can relate to what slaves are going through and can use his personal experiences to convince people that slavery needs to end. While Frederick Douglass experienced many atrocities during his time as a former slave many Americans were aware of what slaves experienced, so he had to use other means as well to persuade his audience to support abolitionism which would help end slavery once and for all in

Through his story, Douglass proves that slavery has negative effects on slaveholders. He uses imagery, flashbacks, and characterization to persuade the reader of the true nature of slavery. His deep thoughts and insights of slavery and the unbalanced power between a slaveholder and his slave are unprompted for a social establishment. Douglass insists that slaveholding fills the soul with sadness and bitter anguish. In addressing effects of slavery on masters cause one man to rethink his moral character and better understand the laws of humanity.

Group Essay on Frederick Douglass “That this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system”, and that Frederick Douglass does in his eponymous autobiography. Douglass throws light by dispelling the myths of the slave system, which received support from all parts of society. To dispel these myths Douglass begins to construct an argument composed around a series of rhetorical appeals and devices. Douglass illustrates that slavery is dehumanizing, corrupting, and promotes Christian hypocrisy. Using telling details, Douglass describes the dehumanizing effects of the slave system which condones the treatment of human beings as property.

As Douglass said in the seventh chapter in his book, he had learned of the word abolition and how it related to freedom and liberty. He learned of this by listening to other conversations about slaves who had run away, murdered their masters, or the like and heard it was from the ‘fruits of abolitions’. Douglass speaks about this instance because of the ferocity of the actions of those who would risk their lives to escape to the freedom of the north and the possibility of starting a new life. A consequent instance of Douglass speaking of his liberty is in chapter ten, in which, he prays to God as well as giving God a small damnation. In this section, Douglass criticizes God for cursing him and the African Americans to the hell that they must endure, but Douglass also begs him to save him, and he wished that, “... I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing”( Douglass, 10).

Men owned men because of the color of their skin. These ex-slaves were uneducated and were scared of any change in their lives. What could be theirs today, may not be theirs tomorrow. It’s a shame that people had to live in fear of the government taking something away from them and all they did was share part of their lives to be documented and the documentation was not even accurate. “Freedom had come to a nation of four million slaves, and it changed their lives in deep and important ways.

The idea behind keeping the slave’s faith in the Lord was that the Lord allows slavery because white people are better than the blacks. Basically, any slave who disobeyed their owner was disobeying the Lord, resulting in an eternity in hell, “To be good children of the Lord, the slaves must beware of Satan who created their cunning wicked master of Hell – for it was Satan who created their desires for freedom and tempted them to run away” (Oates

From this, derives a bond with the reader that pushes their understanding of the evil nature of slavery that society deemed appropriate therefore enhancing their understanding of history. While only glossed over in most classroom settings of the twenty-first century, students often neglect the sad but true reality that the backbone of slavery, was the dehumanization of an entire race of people. To create a group of individuals known for their extreme oppression derived from slavery, required plantation owner’s of the South to constantly embedded certain values into the lives of their slaves. To talk back means to be whipped.

Even though they saw Turner’s actions as pure evil they still wanted to get rid of such an immoral violent system as slavery. Not only because it was immoral but because it also brought up the chances that slaves could only put up with so much of it until they would seek for vengeance. I don’t believe Stephan B. Oates was trying to perpetuate a racial divide in the legacy of Nat Turner at all. What he was trying to do by writing the book The Fires of Jubilee was to accurately tell how the events occurred. He wanted the audience to feel as though they were there living in a body of a slave so they could understand what it was to be a one.

From the very beginning of the seventeenth century, America depended on slaves for free labor in order to make a considerable profit. These slaves were not treated as normal people though; they were sold into a life of no rights, cruel punishment, and rigorous work schedules. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, freed slave Frederick Douglass shares his personal accounts with slavery in order to reveal the harsh truth slavery hides to the public. Throughout his narrative, Douglass uses specific maritime allusions as well as vivid diction, oxymorons and anaphora to persuade the reader to think more philosophically about oppression and in turn ask the question, ‘what does it truly take to be free?’.

Often times, the individuals who would be helping the slaves would often hear about the horrors of slavery, but they could not feel or visualize the suffering of slaves. The Underground Railroad was that tool that spread a change of perceptions because even the most stubborn of individuals, when they witnessed the conditions of the slaves, and they heard the stories the slaves told when slaves became free, that challenged the dominant ideologies of slavery being good. When thousands of slaves permeated the borders of the northern states, naturally even those who wanted to reject African Americans had to confront and live with the fact that African Americans are not slaves. This generated support for abolition because African Americans were quite competent when they did not have to the basic servile duties for their slave masters. Talented black men like Benjamin Banneker and Phillis Wheatley, a mathematician and a famous poet, proved that free black men could contribute to society (Divine et al 138).

Twain’s portrayal of slaveholding also brings into question society’s moral value and hypocrisy. Basically, the book is about Huckleberry Finn’s growing character and insights about race/slavery/society while on a adventure. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are described as opposites of each other in every way such as Tom’s romanticism and Huck’s skepticism but also have some things in common like rambunctious boyishness. Another novel that is referred is Don Quixote to acknowledge the parallel in they way it was written. From the beginning of the book

When people talk about slavery they more or less tend to label the good ones who were against slavery into the North and then the monsters as being the Southerners. Stowe showed the readers that this isn’t true, and that you can’t just point and blame that easily. Through Tom’s owners, Mr. Shelby and St. Clare, Stowe showed us the reality of kindness that some Southern slave owners possessed. Both of these slave owners believed it wrong to harm their slaves and to treat them with any type of cruelty. St. Clare tended to share his opinions on slavery, and Stowe used this character to show how many Southerners thought slavery to be an act of iniquity, but were too stubborn to try and change the ways of their society.

His knowledge made him realize that the enslaves were like robber who went to Africa and stole them from their own home. Douglass was unhappy and started to think of ways to change it ,and he then started to analyze the need of gaining their freedom from slaveholders, and the urge to runaway . “[I] got one of our city papers, containing an account of the number of petition from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia…” (Par. 9) When Douglass read the city papers, he then understood the true meaning of the words abolition and abolitionist. This means that literacy was a huge impact with Douglass of the true idea of slavery and how slaveholders were taking advantage of them .

The North was to blame because they became unwilling to help the freedmen. The North was beginning to think that blacks were not up to the challenge of becoming politicians. The people that had fought an entire war to free the slaves were now backing away. They were foolishly believing that the freedmen were lazy, arrogant fat cats.(Richardson, 517) The North knew it was wrong and false but they believed it anyway.