Intolerance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Intolerance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The entire plot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is rooted on

intolerance between different social groups. Without prejudice and

intolerance The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would not have any of

the antagonism or intercourse that makes the recital interesting. The

prejudice and intolerance found in the book are the characteristics

that make The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a great American Classic.

The author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Samuel Langhorn,

who is more commonly known by his pen name, Mark Twain. He was born in

1835 with the passing of Haley's comet, and died in 1910 with the

passing of Haley's comet. Twain often used prejudice as a building

block for the plots of his stories. Twain even said, "The very ink in

which history is written is merely fluid prejudice." There are many

other instances in which Twain uses prejudice as a foundation for the

entertainment of his writings. Even in the opening paragraph of The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Twain states, "Persons attempting to

find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting

to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a

plot in it will be shot." There were many groups that Twain contrasted

in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The interaction of these

different social groups is what makes up the main plot of the novel.

For the objective of discussion they have been broken down into five

main sets of antithetic parties: people with high levels of melanin and

people with low levels of melanin, rednecks and scholarly, children and

adults, men and women, and finally, the Sheperdson's and the

Grangerford's. Whites and African Americans are the main two groups

contrasted in the novel. Throughout the novel Twain portrays

Caucasians as a more educated group that is higher in society compared

to the African Americans portrayed in the novel. The cardinal way that

Twain portrays African Americans as obsequious is through the colloquy

that he assigns them. Their dialogue is composed of nothing but broken

English. One example in the novel is this excerpt from the

conversation between Jim the fugitive slave, and Huckleberry about why

Jim ran away, where Jim declares, "Well you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole

missus-dat's Miss Watson-she pecks on me all de time, en treats me

pooty rough, but she awluz said she woudn' sell me down to Orleans."

Although this is the phonetic spelling of how some African Americans

from the boondocks used to talk, Twain only applied the argot to Blacks

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