Intolerance Within The Novel
...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 great.
The author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Samuel Langhorn
Clemens, 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. Clemens often used prejudice as a building block
for the plots of his stories. Clemens even said," The very ink in which history is
written is merely fluid prejudice." There are many other instances in which
Clemens uses prejudice as a foundation for the entertainment of his writings
such as this quote he said about foreigners in The Innocents Abroad: "They
spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they
pronounce." Even in the opening paragraph of The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn Clemens 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 Clemens 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 Clemens...
View Full Essay
