Violence In Mark Twain's Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

In the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus spends years traveling the ocean trying to get home and learning lessons at various stops along the way. Similarly, in Mark Twain 's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck spends much of the book on the river in a raft with runaway slave Jim. The two travel down the Mississippi River and encounter a variety of adventures along the way. However, when Huck does leave the raft he learns important lessons and develops as a more moral person. Huck learns of the destruction that violence can cause. At the beginning of the book, Huck was a member of Tom Sawyer 's band of robbers and he was eager to participate in the kidnapping and ransoming and killing the group planned to commit . However, as Huck spends time with a family called the Grangerfords on one of his trips off the raft, he begins to see the harm violence will bring. The Grangerfords have a long-lasting feud with another family, the Shepherdsons, that according to Buck Grangerford causes a ¨right smart chance of funerals¨, showing Huck how many people have become casualties of meaningless fighting between two families(163). This blind hatred and bloodlust leads to Huck 's stay with the Grangerfords ending on a violent note as well. In a shootout between the Shepherdsons and Grangerfords the Shepherdsons slaughter all the male Grangerfords while ¨singing out ´Kill them, kill them!´¨(171). Neither family had any reservations about this fight and all the blood they were shedding and were