Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn


Twain writes Huck Finn after slavery was abolished during reconstruction, but it is set in the time of slavery. Twain's portrayal of race relations during slavery is a criticism of the race relations that were "turning south" again in his time.

Twain communicates that racism is learned and not natural by showing a child's off-put reaction to slavery. Twain shows the impersonality needed to support racism: when Huck gets to know Jim personally he cannot turn him in.

Twain also ponders morality in his novel. At first, Finn lives in Kohlberg's second level of moral development, the conventional level. He shows interest in following laws, placing him at or around stage four, authority and social-order maintaining orientation.. Then shows hints of stage five, social contract orientation, when he runs from his father, whom has broken his social contract. Finally, Finn breaks free of stage four and ascends to stage four and a half or four plus, when he decides not to turn in Jim from realizing that he does not agree with society's decision that slavery is okay. Twain wants readers to consider their own moral development and relate it to Finn's.

Twain is a writer but chiefly a humorist. In the middle portion of the book, his portrayal of poor Southerners as buffoons incapable of recognizing a fleecing who are only interested in chaws of tobacky is meant to dig on their ignorant acceptance of slavery when they don't realize that they have more in common with the black slaves than the rich white landowners. As poor people spat on from above by the landowning class, they wanted someone to spit on below them, so they accepted the enslavement of blacks as it created a social class lower than themselves. Twain's use of humor is thus highly effective in communicating the tragic irony of the situation.

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