Introduction
Mark Twain is known all over world for his witty humor. His novels and short stories are funny and easy-to-read, but at the same time the author manages to depict all human vices, making you laugh at them. He has some books about children, and one of them is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Main text
We can see the world through the eyes of the white boy, Huck, who is the narrator. It is no surprise that a child is the one to tell the story, because children cannot lie. It is difficult to say that about educated and “decent” grown-ups. They go to church and believe in God, but still they accept racism and slavery. And as for Huck the color of skin doesn’t matter to him. He makes friends with a runaway slave, Jim. They start their journey along the Missouri.
As for their relations, they are the embodiment of true friendship. They friends help each other in every way. Huck treats the black man with respect just because Jim is older. This is how it should be in society, which claims to be moral and fair. But what can we see in the reality? In the eyes of general public they both are just outcasts.
What happens to children with years? They just lose the ability to see things not the way they are said to be, but the way they are. They learn to lie and, what is more, they start to believe in what they say. The Widow Douglas and Miss Watson are representatives of decent middle-class society, but Huck just cannot bear living with them and wearing the mask of hypocrisy for the rest of his life. As for the poor women they are sure they teach Huck only good, they want to make the boy “civilized”, but in fact they are just spoiling him. Under their influence Huck has to invent two gods. Because how can the God of love and compassion be so cruel? Huck is uneducated and his speech is rude, he’s far from being a small gentleman, but we can see that he is honest.
During their trip Huckleberry and Jim experience many funny and frightening adventures. Some of them made the boy feel sick of the humans. Two bandits, the King and the Duke joined them. They turned out to be cruel and immoral, had no sense of decency, nothing was sacred with them. When in one small town the King found out about death of one man, he pretended to be his brother. Everyone treated them with all the possible kindness and tried to please them and make them feel comfortable. Huck says “Well, if I ever struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.”
At the end of the story both evil-doers were punished. But when Huck saw the King and the Duke tarred and feathered, surrounded by crying and hooting crowd, he felt sorry for them.
“Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them anymore in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
Summary
So in such a way through the social outcast Mark Twain depicts many human vices. The question is why do we forget about who we are true? Why do we make so miserable fools of ourselves? Why do we have to wear stupid masks trying to fit the hypocritical society? Until everybody tries to find the answer, the damnation of the human race will still be in power.