Huck Finn as a Social Protest Novel

As Mark Twain takes you through the sometimes exciting and captivating journey of the young character Huck, he takes you even deeper into his protests toward society. Each character and each situation plays a precise and symbolic role as Twain satirizes society for its many faults and hatreds. As you will come to learn, he had many. Therefore, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the definition of a social protest novel. Twain uses conflict between the adversary families the Shepherdsons and Grangerfolds to depict the many-religious-hypocrisies of so-called devout Christians of society. This hypocrisy is apparent when Huck related how at, "Church [during a sermon of brotherly love]… the men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall." (Twain 146) This depicts the hypocrisies of these so-called Christians as the worst sort of violent and ignorant hypocrites – they profess to adhere to the ideology of peaceful Christianity and practicing divine understanding, while preparing to kill off each and every member of the adversary family in which they hate for some long-forgotten reason. Because of their living hypocrisy these Christians brought along their guns [to church] knowing their enemies would be side-by-side listening to the sermon, and went against that peace and understanding they supposedly agree so much with. Huck continued to narrate, "It was pretty ornery preaching - all about brotherly love and such-like tiresomeness…"(Twain 146) This further explains the setting they are in as a place of peace, and shows that even in church in absence of all the outside world they are living out their hypocrisy by not adhering to that brotherly love. Furthermore, there is no brotherly love with a gun between your knee and a fight around the corner. Overall, Twain protests so-called Christian ideals as irrelevant if those Christians are unable to practice what they preach. As you read along for another example of Twain's bitter views towards society you will note his use of Huck's drunken Father. After crossing paths with a successful, freed slave, Pap snarled with alcohol fueled venom, "There was a free nigger there… ain't a man in town that's got as fine clothes as what he had… awfullest old gray-headed nabob in the state."(Twain 36) This, in friendlier words than what he uses following that remark, shows the type of character a person would have to be to depict a man of such prestige as someone who would be so disgusting to him when he's the one who should be looking in his own backyard. This creates the idea that ignorance such as racism lies within the hearts of the proud. He goes on with his disgust to say, "Why he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at the auction and sold?"(Twain 36-37) Pap is then on described to be hollering on-and-on showing the notion that even though he had nothing, because of his race he was still better than the next man. Twain expressed how ludicrous it is to feel that just because you're of the white race you are entitled to feel that people of other races should go out of their way to let you pass them by. Throughout Pap's whole speech, the underlying truth that symbolizes his drunken rage is that racism and pride breed ignorance. This sort of ignorance is just intolerable. Throughout the whole journey you continue to take through the novel, Twain continues to use instances such as the fore-mentioned to depict his feelings towards society. Whether he used the drunk and snarling Pap to create a tumultuous array of frustrated feelings towards racism, or the differences between two rivaling families to symbolize the hypocrisy of many pseudo-ethical flimflams Twain is able to depict his own objections in a completely creative and analytical sense. This paved the way for his highly confrontational novel. This also gave The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the genre of a social protest novel.