Mark Twain s The Racism Of His Time - 1358 Words

In response to the racism of his time, Mark Twain uses The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to contend that racism is an artificial, manufactured product of civilization that supplants the ingrained, human resistance to injustices like racism. To substantiate this point, Twain interweaves the reoccurring motifs of the instinctive feeling of sickness, the effects of a civilized upbringing, and the presence of romanticism into the story. Throughout the book, the titular protagonist, Huckleberry Finn, has a penchant for feeling sick. Huckleberry feels sick when he sees his father, when he feels bad for a runaway slave, when he sees brutal violence, when sees slaves being sold off, when he sees people getting tarred and feathered, and when he sees people about to capture a runaway slave. The common thread in the many situations is the perceived injustice or wrongness by Huckleberry. The initial incident that defines the mold is Huckleberry’s encounter with his father, and Huckleberr y describing his father as somebody â€Å"to make a body sick† (Twain 14). Huckleberry’s unnamed father is prone to violence, drunkenness, and other less than positive activities. This initial juxtaposition of something wrong and Huckleberry’s feeling sick later becomes characteristic in the book. After this, Twain weaves this signal for negativity with examples of racism and other wrongs. Huckleberry feels sick after seeing a group of men kill some boys in a family feud. 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