Social Realism In Huck Finn

Roynees Morel

Mrs. Lagomarsino

American Literature 11 Honors / Period 7

11/17/2013

Social Realism of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Many people love reading about the things that have a low chance of possibility of happening to that person. It is seen in the classics, that there are today. Some girls dream about being a princesses like Cinderella, even though they never will. That is known as Romanticism, which is a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. Writers like Mark Twain shifted away from Romanticism. Events like the American Civil War inspired many writers to write about the ordinary life of the people. This is known as Realism, which was a literary movement that sought to portray ordinary life as real people live it and attempted to show characters and events in an objective, almost factual way. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the reader sees life of average people in a pre – Civil War era. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the aspects of Realism can be seen in the plot, conflicts, themes and characters. Mark Twain also calls attention to aspects of life through satire, and irony.

Being written in time of struggle and strive, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn express the ideals and life experienced by average Americans in the pre – Civil War era. That was a big change in literature. Readers were accustomed to the love stories of William Shakespeare and seasonal metaphors of John Keats. The stories of Mark Twain are extremely different from those mentioned earlier. Mark Twain wrote about what was happening, instead of what people wanted to happen. In his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry F...

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... After the Reconstruction Era, business started to flow in the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age was a time of extreme greed and was nicknamed the “Gilded Age” by Mark Twain himself.

Writers like Mark Twain wrote about what really mattered to the majority of the population. His stories were not considered fairy tales, but narratives. Realism was an important change in literature, because it allowed the average Joe story to be alright. Instead of paying or reading a story about something you will never have, a person will read about the everyday problems. People saw that humans had more in common than they taught. Mark Twain’s narrative, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn expose the literary movement that is known today as Realism. Mark Twain also criticizes the “ills” of the American society, which he hopes he could be able to correct by raising awareness to the problem.