Huck Finn, Theme/Chapter Analysis - Essay Example

May 12, Themes in the book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Multiple themes have been stressed upon in this novel. Twain depicts the dreadfulness of slavery and racism through the character Jim. He is going to be sold away from his family by Miss Watson, so he runs away. Huck travels with him down the Mississippi, but even Huck at first treats him like a piece of property, and Jim, because Huck is white, must do what this twelve year old boy wants. Even though he is a slave, Jim shows Huck that he is a real human being, who has true feelings and who deeply cares for his family.

Huck begins to understand Jim and accept his humanity. As a result, he is willing to fight for his friend. These themes have been discussed in detail in various situations in the novel and much light is thrown to these issues.The first chapter begins Twain’s investigation of race and society, two of the major thematic concerns in Huckleberry Finn. It is indicated since the beginning of the novel that in the town of St. Petersburg, owning slaves is considered normal and unremarkable—even the Widow Douglas, a pious Christian, owns slaves.

The slaves depicted in the novel are “household slaves,” slaves who worked on small farms and in homes in which the master owned only a few slaves. Twain tacitly contrasts this type of slavery with the more brutal form of plantation slavery, in which hundreds of slaves worked for a single master, creating greater namelessness between slave and master, which in turn led to more backbreaking labor—and, often, extreme brutality. Some critics have accused Twain of painting too soft a picture of slavery by not writing about plantation slaves.

However, by depicting the “better” version of slavery, Twain is able to make a sharper criticism of the deceptive dehumanization that accompanies all forms of slavery: the “lucky” household slaves, just like their counterparts on the plantations, are also in danger of having their families torn apart and are never considered fully human. There may be difference in the tasks of the slaves but in reality they are facing the same situation. Twain’s portrayal suggests that if the “better” slavery is this terrible, the horrors of the “worse” type must be even more awful and dehumanizing.

It is important to note here that Twain uses the word nigger, which has gotten Huckleberry Finn in trouble with many twentieth-century school boards, with a nonchalance that is certainly troubling to us today.Twain’s portrayal of slaveholding in this first chapter also raises questions about the hypocrisy and moral emptiness of society. Throughout the novel, Huck encounters seemingly respectable people who happen to own slaves—an inappropriateness that is never easily resolved. We are not meant to think that the Widow Douglas, for example, is thoroughly evil.

People like the Widow serve as foils for Huck throughout the novel, as he tries to sort out the value of civilizing influences. Huck is a kind of natural philosopher, disbelieving of social doctrines like religion and willing to set forth new ideas—for example, his idea that hell might actually be a better place than the Widow Douglas’s heaven. Beneath the adventure story, Huckleberry Finn is a tale of Huck’s moral development and of what his realizations can teach us about race, slavery, Southern society, and morality.

ReferencesSpark Notes Editors. “Spark Note on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” SparkNotes.com. Spark Notes LLC. 2002. Web. 3 May 2011.