Samuel Clemens, better known as
Mark Twain, is revered as one of the greatest authors of all time. His work Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the
sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
and arguably twice the novel of its predecessor. It is the tale of corruption,
conformity, deception, and morality. Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn is a novel that challenged the world Clemens lived in,
and continues to challenge our world today.
Huckleberry
“Huck” Finn is an “uncivilized” boy by his society’s standards, his corrupt
society with their conformed mindsets and morals. After all, they do live in a
state where a free black man must live in the state six months before he can be
sold into slavery; what a crime, wait six months to auction that heathen. Huck
lives in a nightmare world by today’s standards, or so we would like to think.
He is raised conformed to the corruption, but the conformity has only
penetrated as far as his sense of right and wrong. When Huck must decide
between helping Jim and turning him in, Huck feels what he must do from the pit
of his being, and he realizes that it is in direct conflict with what he has
been told is right all his life. Therefore he decides that he will go to Hell
if that is the punishment for his decisions, not realizing that it is not he
who is in the wrong, but the rest of his pitiful world.
Many
claim this novel to be racist, using the profanity of the word “n-----” often
and never saying anything to the wiser. These critics are either looking for
something to condemn or are simply not very intelligent, and require a direct
explanation on the opinions of the author. The novel does not oppose racism and
slavery in direct text, but by the events of the novel. It is well said that
actions speak louder than words, and the actions of this novel clearly demonstrates
an opposition to the evils of the day.
How
does The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
apply to our lives today? It plants the thought in our mind; “Why do I believe
what I do?” Well, answer that question. Do we believe what we believe because
we have been raised to believe it? Are you a Christian? Why? Because God has
appeared to you and showed His glory or because you were either raised in it or
came across it with the deep need to believe in something greater than
yourself, and purer than the world? If you lived in Turkey, would you follow
the Christ figure or Mohammed and Allah? If your family was Islamic, can you
say you would not be also? Or if you were raised a Jew, would you think to
yourself “wow, I have been taught wrong my entire life.” and suddenly change
religions? Or are we all so deeply conformed to our environment that we will blindly
believe in whatever we were taught to? How is it that men and women will not
only willingly sacrifice their lives, but the lives of their children also over
events that may or may not have happened over two millennia ago, then were
taught orally for years before they were written down, then censored and
selectively chosen, then translated over and over again until a compilation
named “The Holy Bible” is formed, then taught to the masses however the priest,
reverend, or preacher decides to interpret the cloudy and indirect verses? Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows us
that our world is nothing more than the conformed corrupt bias that we are
raised and surrounded in, and that only the seldom few will ever have the
scales fall from their eyes to show the truth of our lives, that there is no
truth but what you interpret, and this is what I interpret.
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