Dehumanization In Huck Finn

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Dehumanization-To dehumanize is to treat someone or something as if they are not human; living and breathing like you and I. It could happen to anyone from any race or social class, and even animals. There are many large occurrences of it throughout human history like the Holocaust, and even small instances that happen on a daily basis like bullying. Throughout their adventures, Huck and Jim encounter dehumanization on quite a few occasions. Within this essay I plan to analyze the dehumanization of animals; all the unsuspecting pigs and dogs that get put down, tortured or killed. On top of that I plan to touch on Pap and Boggs- two characters encountered by Huck and Jim, who are dehumanized due to their love for liquor. The final case of dehumanization I will analyze is one that many may not have noticed; our narrator himself, Huckleberry Finn- Especially how Tom Sawyer views him in comparison to how he views Jim. What …show more content…

Run along and smouch the knives—three of them.’ So I done it” (Twain, 561). This quote is an instance of Tom Sawyer dehumanizing Huck basically by telling him he lacks the human quality of understanding. This quote is strangely familiar. It actually seems about the same as the following. “I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit” (Twain, 373). There’s a sort of parallel here- Huck is to Tom as Jim is to Huck. It seems as though Twain did this on purpose- As if he meant for the reader to realize this parallel. The choice of using the word learn, instead of teach could just be a dialect thing, but I think otherwise. I think it was used in both instances to create the connection. Huck is dehumanizing Jim saying he doesn’t have the human quality to learn and Tom is doing the same to Huck. Due to the connection, I’d say Tom is putting Huck down twice as hard. Not only is he bad at learning and understanding, but he’s just about as good at it as a black

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