Examples Of Naturalism In Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a realism style book written by Mark Twain. Realism has many marks that set it apart from romanticism, such as imperfect characters who are part of society and the use of local color. Pap’s character showed realism by being a despicable human, and didn’t change for the better even when given a chance. Another trait can be found in Huckleberry Finn’s character through him being the main character yet also part of society. The use of local color gives the finishing touch by setting the scene of the book. Pap was Huck’s abusive, alcoholic, and ignorant father. Huck described Pap as having long, tangled, and greasy hair, twisted whiskers, and rags for clothes. Pap beat and verbally abused Huck by saying that

Pap’s actions and description show that he was just a bully who has nothing and belittles his son to make himself feel better. In chapter five Pap went to see Judge Thatcher to try to keep custody of Huck. The judge felt pity for Pap and fed, dressed, and let him stay at his house for the night(Twain 23). This lead the audience to believe that Pap may be reformed, and he could have become a romantic character if he had been. This thought came crashing down when Pap traded his clothes to buy liquor and got drunk. The judge then realised his mistake and said “[...] a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way(Twain 17). Twain was commenting that with real people no matter who tries to help them, they won’t change unless they want to. It’s also easier to stay the same than it is to change. This type of character contrasts strongly with a romantic character. In romanticism Pap

Huck was a thirteen years old who smokes, cusses, and steals. Huck has been raised in a southern society where he was taught that owning slaves was the correct thing. While Huck helps Jim escape there are several times that he thinks about turning Jim in, although he never can do it. Because Huck was raised in society he was still apart of society, this is an idea in realism. If Huck was a romantic character he would not have the flaws of smoking, cursing, stealing, or thinking slavery was okay. The same sort of character is seen in Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. In this short story the main character of a yarn was Jim Smiley. Jim’s flaws were cheating and gambling. In a romanticism piece neither Huck or Jim would have character flaws. With the character of Huck, Twain was saying that in society you can’t expect people to act any different than the people around them. They won’t act differently because that is all they would ever be exposed to. This would cause them to think that their behavior is perfectly normal, no matter how blatantly wrong it seems to