Huckleberry Finn
... the new judge in town allowing for Pap to keep custody of Huck. The judge privileges Pap’s “rights” to his son as his natural father over Huck’s welfare. In some part this is also making a statement about the system that allows a whit mans rights to his “property”-slaves-and over the welfare and freedom of the black man. Twain implies through these examples that it is impossible for a society who owns slaves, to be a just one. No matter how “civilised” that society believes and proclaims itself to be, Throughout the text Huck encounters individuals who are seemingly good, with good intentions, like Sally Phelps, who is a prejudiced slave owner. This false sense of justice, which Huck encounters, lies at the very heart of the society’s problems. Terrible acts go unpunished whereas frivolous crimes such as drunkenly shouting insults can lead to execution. The society is as Sherburne preaches in his speech that rather than the society maintaining collective welfare; it is instead marked by cowardice, lack of logic and selfishness. The major conflict Huck is faced with appears at the beginning of the novel where he struggles against society and its attempts to civilize him. This theme being driven and represented by the Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and other adults who seek to “mould” Huck. Later, this conflict gains greater focus in Huck’s dealings with Jim, as Huck must decide whether to turn Jim in, as society demands, or to protect and help his friend instead. And as it turns out through what Huck has learnt for himself in Order to protect Jim he lies and makes up a story to scare off some men searching for escaped slaves. Although Huck and Jim live a relatively peaceful life on the raft, they are ultimately unable to escape the evils and hypocrisies of the outside world. The most notable representatives of these outside evils are the con men the duke and the dauphin, who engage in a series of increasingly serious scams that culminate in their sale of Jim, who ends up at the Phelps farm. Although Twain wrote the story after slavery had been abolished, the story was set several decades earlier when slavery was still a way of life. Even still in Twains time things had not really gotten any better for the blacks in the South, and so we could see the depiction of slavery in the story as being an allegorical representation of the treatment and condition of the blacks long after the abolition of slavery. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery demonstrates how racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does the oppressed. This resulting in a society filled with moral confusion. This sees “good” white people like Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express no concern regarding the injustice of slavery or the cruelty involved with separating Jim from his family. Another theme within the novel is that of intellectual and moral education. Huck is a poor, uneducated and practically an orphan. He is distrustful of the morals in the society. The same society that treats him as an outcast and fails to protect him from abuse. His apprehension about society and growing friendship with Jim, lead Huck to question the teachings he had received, regarding race and slavery. More than once we see Huck choose to go against the rules and what he has been taught. He bases these decisions on his experiences, his own sense of logic, and what his conscience tells him. Out on the raft, away from civilization, we see Huck free from society’s rules, able to make his own decisions without restriction. And through deep introspective Huck comes to his own conclusions, unaffected by the rules and values of Southern culture. Coming towards the conclusion of the novel, Huck has learned to understand and “read” the world around him. His moral development leading him to be able to see the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, friend and foe etc. This being a contrast to the character of Tom Sawyer, who is influenced by the strange mix of Sunday school teachings and sense of adventure to justify his “out there” and potentially harmful escapades. Huck’s youth plays an important role in the theme of his moral education over the course of the novel. Huck is obviously a very open-minded child, because only a child with such a flexible capacity could undergo the development that Huck did through the novel. Because Huck and Tom Sawyer are so young, there is a sense of “play” in their actions which can excuse them to a degree, but which deepens Twain's depiction of slavery and society. It seems that although Huck hasn’t had the guidance or had the same amount of experience as that of the adults surrounding him in a sense Huck seems to know better than any of them. Twain also manages to draw attention to the obvious distinction but yet the underlying similarities between Huck and Jim. The seemingly difference in race is drawn in because of Huck’s youthfulness. Because of Jims status as a black man, and Huck's youthfulness both are vulnerable, but yet Huck still has “power” over Jim because Huck is white. From the time Huck meets Jim on Jackson’s Island until the end of the novel. Jim spouts a wide range of superstitions and folktales. Where Jim initially appears foolish to believe in these kinds of signs and omens, it turns out, curiously, that many of his beliefs do have some basis in reality or events to come. Huck at first dismisses most of Jim’s superstitions as silly, but ultimately he comes to appreciate Jim’s deep knowledge of the world. In this sense, Jim’s superstition serves as an alternative to accepted social teachings and assumptions and provides a re...