Examples Of Controversy In Huckleberry Finn
In the present day, controversy over several key issues in the world runs rampant. Controversy over race, gender, and identity values plague the day to day happenings of everyone connected to the outside world. This is not unusual, however. Even in the 1800s, controversy was unrestrained over issues that are similar to the ones today. A prime example of such controversy is demonstrated in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. The controversy centered around the moral and religious values of the book was pressing back in the 19th century, and is as present today. It is claimed that such controversy could have been avoided, simply if the book did not contain the controversial moral and religious aspects it is centered on, like the
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abolition of slavery and the spread of Christianity through the event of reawakening. However, moral and religious values deemed controversial in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were necessary to promote the propagandist meaning behind the work, and cannot be removed, lest the significance of the text be lost. In the past, the main controversy over religion in the book centered around its portrayal of Christianity. The book very clearly shows the author’s opinion of Christianity, and religion itself, as being a ridiculous way to vent one’s frustrations to a being they believe will grant them something to satiate them, at least for the time being. Twain shows a typical scene in a religious rally to articulate the notion of the unnecessity of religion: “You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild” (Twain 127). Twain is trying to show that the people in the church weren’t there because they truly believed in whatever value they were preaching about; the people were there because they had no other way to feel connected to others. The fervency with which they worshipped was ludicrous for a church, as it would be, because they were not there for the church, they were there as a distraction. The preacher’s words hardly mattered to the crowd that took up the prayer in a violent, un-Christian manner. Now, in the present, this becomes more obvious, as in the past, the people truly did believe they were there to preach, even though they weren’t. In this era, it is known that with other way to connect oneself to society, such as social networking, religion can be practiced how it is preached: in a calm and proper manner, without the personal passions of everyone present creating a furor, and people can still have a chance to express themselves through other means entirely, such as public speaking. Twain showed religion then as an unnecessary, silly part of life. This was controversial at the time because of the extreme vigor the reawakening movements were bringing: “At these meetings, the most famous (or notorious) of which took place at Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people would gather from miles around in a wilderness encampment for four days to a week. There they engaged in an unrelenting series of intense spiritual exercises, punctuated with cries of religious agony and ecstasy, all designed to promote religious fervor and conversions” (Scott). The extreme passion for religion during the 19th century brought no chance to look at religion as unnecessary. Thus, when Twain produced a work that clearly showed how unnecessary he thought religion was, critics of the time deemed it to be anti-religion and therefore, a controversy was sparked. Moral controversy over slavery was also eminent in the 19th century, much more than it is today. Today, it is generally accepted that the barrage of insults used towards those who were pro-slavery was justified, and therefore not controversial. In the 19th century, the fact that slavery was a moral wrong was only just coming into the political and societal spotlight. Many people were, in fact, pro-slavery, and the fact that Twain refers to those southerners in a demeaning moral and intellectual stand makes the moral issue of slavery a topic of controversy in the book. Perhaps the most unscrupulous moment in the novel is reached by the selling of Jim, a runaway slave, by the King, a man that Jim knew and trusted. When Huck cannot find Jim, he goes to the Duke, partner to the King, but slightly more moral, and asks him where Jim and the raft are. His response is, “Blamed if I know—that is, what’s become of the raft. That old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what he’d spent for whisky” (Twain 208). The fact that the King sells Jim for a mere forty dollars shows the level of disrespect one must have for themselves and their morals, as the King was perhaps the most unscrupulous character in the novel. To add insult to injury, the King spends all of the money he made on whiskey, which, according to the temperance acts of the time, was a show of true lowliness. The fact that such a low-level fraud as the one to sell Jim shows that in order to endorse slavery, one must be of as low a moral standing, no matter how high in society they were. In the 19th century the abolition movement was gaining momentum in the north, while the south remained entrenched in their feudal system. The concept of abolition was unfathomable to them, a foreign, unwelcome idea. So, when Jim ran away to freedom, and the pro-slavery southerners were spoken of as unscrupulous, the controversy over morality was introduced into the discussions of critics. Morality was more widely debated than religion, as there was a true game of opposition, the north vs. the south, while on religion, everyone agreed it was necessary. There, the issue centers more on the past vs. the present: “The emancipation of slaves in the northern states and the prohibition against the African slave trade generated optimism that slavery was dying… At the present rate of progress, predicted one religious leader in 1791, within 50 years it will “be as shameful for a man to hold a Negro slave, as to be guilty of common robbery or theft.” By the early 1830s, however, the development of the Cotton Kingdom proved that slavery was not on the road to extinction. Despite the end of the African slave trade, the slave population continued to grow, climbing from 1.5 million in 1820 to over 2 million a decade later” (Digital History). The north was blatantly progressive in their efforts to promote equality and morality, which Twain supported. However, the south vehemently continued their slavery efforts, and thus found Twain’s writing to be atrocious and a personal insult to their society. Opponents of the moral and religious controversy issues The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has caused argue vehemently that if people in the 19th century were not referred to as obtuse for being religious, or pro-slavery mobs were not compared to a deceitful liar, the novel could have avoided its controversial status.
However, the novel was not a merely a basic story, it was a powerful mean of political propaganda, and had Twain left out what makes the book so controversial, the significance of said propaganda would have completely fallen flat, as there would have been no controversy to carry it. An example of anti- religious propaganda from the book would be: “When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he’d ever put in in the missionarying line. He said it warn’t no use talking, heathens don’t amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with” (Twain 129). This shows Twain’s mockery of the religious, and how they are fooled into giving an obvious con-man (at least from Huck’s perspective) money. This is also satirical because it the King is an apparent con artist to the reader, but the devout Christians can barely look beyond the religious veil that covers their eyes. During the 1840s, religion was thought to make one see the world clearer, so satire is played out by this. His abolition propaganda is demonstrated when Aunt Sally asked Huck if he was late because his boat had grounded. He responded with, “It warn’t the grounding—that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head.” Aunt Sally said, “Good gracious! anybody hurt?” Huck replied, “No’m. Killed a nigger.” Aunt Sally’s response was a prime example of satire and propaganda: “Well, it’s lucky; because
sometimes people do get hurt” (Twain 213). Aunt Sally, a kind, gentle women, doesn’t think of blacks as people, and while this may seem redundant to any pro-slavery activist, readers of the book would have realized along with Huck how much of a person Jim, a black man, truly is. Twain shows here that he was actively campaigning an anti-religion, abolition movement, and while the religious aspect is still strongly debated today, the abolition aspect is fully endorsed, and was endorsed by the many even during the time it was written. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, though accused of moral and religious controversy, could not have been without, mainly because of the image it was trying to portray and the propagandist denotation in the work. The moral and religious controversy lies in Twain’s negative connotation with religion and pro-slavery mobs, both of which were very important to the 19th century. In addition, the fact that the novel was written in an ironic sense to show people of the time period the ridiculousness of their beliefs and standards would have been lost had controversy not been present. Therefore, in order to have meaning behind any work, there will be controversy over opinion, and that is perhaps the most driving force of fame not only in works of literature, but in any field.
abolition of slavery and the spread of Christianity through the event of reawakening. However, moral and religious values deemed controversial in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were necessary to promote the propagandist meaning behind the work, and cannot be removed, lest the significance of the text be lost. In the past, the main controversy over religion in the book centered around its portrayal of Christianity. The book very clearly shows the author’s opinion of Christianity, and religion itself, as being a ridiculous way to vent one’s frustrations to a being they believe will grant them something to satiate them, at least for the time being. Twain shows a typical scene in a religious rally to articulate the notion of the unnecessity of religion: “You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild” (Twain 127). Twain is trying to show that the people in the church weren’t there because they truly believed in whatever value they were preaching about; the people were there because they had no other way to feel connected to others. The fervency with which they worshipped was ludicrous for a church, as it would be, because they were not there for the church, they were there as a distraction. The preacher’s words hardly mattered to the crowd that took up the prayer in a violent, un-Christian manner. Now, in the present, this becomes more obvious, as in the past, the people truly did believe they were there to preach, even though they weren’t. In this era, it is known that with other way to connect oneself to society, such as social networking, religion can be practiced how it is preached: in a calm and proper manner, without the personal passions of everyone present creating a furor, and people can still have a chance to express themselves through other means entirely, such as public speaking. Twain showed religion then as an unnecessary, silly part of life. This was controversial at the time because of the extreme vigor the reawakening movements were bringing: “At these meetings, the most famous (or notorious) of which took place at Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people would gather from miles around in a wilderness encampment for four days to a week. There they engaged in an unrelenting series of intense spiritual exercises, punctuated with cries of religious agony and ecstasy, all designed to promote religious fervor and conversions” (Scott). The extreme passion for religion during the 19th century brought no chance to look at religion as unnecessary. Thus, when Twain produced a work that clearly showed how unnecessary he thought religion was, critics of the time deemed it to be anti-religion and therefore, a controversy was sparked. Moral controversy over slavery was also eminent in the 19th century, much more than it is today. Today, it is generally accepted that the barrage of insults used towards those who were pro-slavery was justified, and therefore not controversial. In the 19th century, the fact that slavery was a moral wrong was only just coming into the political and societal spotlight. Many people were, in fact, pro-slavery, and the fact that Twain refers to those southerners in a demeaning moral and intellectual stand makes the moral issue of slavery a topic of controversy in the book. Perhaps the most unscrupulous moment in the novel is reached by the selling of Jim, a runaway slave, by the King, a man that Jim knew and trusted. When Huck cannot find Jim, he goes to the Duke, partner to the King, but slightly more moral, and asks him where Jim and the raft are. His response is, “Blamed if I know—that is, what’s become of the raft. That old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what he’d spent for whisky” (Twain 208). The fact that the King sells Jim for a mere forty dollars shows the level of disrespect one must have for themselves and their morals, as the King was perhaps the most unscrupulous character in the novel. To add insult to injury, the King spends all of the money he made on whiskey, which, according to the temperance acts of the time, was a show of true lowliness. The fact that such a low-level fraud as the one to sell Jim shows that in order to endorse slavery, one must be of as low a moral standing, no matter how high in society they were. In the 19th century the abolition movement was gaining momentum in the north, while the south remained entrenched in their feudal system. The concept of abolition was unfathomable to them, a foreign, unwelcome idea. So, when Jim ran away to freedom, and the pro-slavery southerners were spoken of as unscrupulous, the controversy over morality was introduced into the discussions of critics. Morality was more widely debated than religion, as there was a true game of opposition, the north vs. the south, while on religion, everyone agreed it was necessary. There, the issue centers more on the past vs. the present: “The emancipation of slaves in the northern states and the prohibition against the African slave trade generated optimism that slavery was dying… At the present rate of progress, predicted one religious leader in 1791, within 50 years it will “be as shameful for a man to hold a Negro slave, as to be guilty of common robbery or theft.” By the early 1830s, however, the development of the Cotton Kingdom proved that slavery was not on the road to extinction. Despite the end of the African slave trade, the slave population continued to grow, climbing from 1.5 million in 1820 to over 2 million a decade later” (Digital History). The north was blatantly progressive in their efforts to promote equality and morality, which Twain supported. However, the south vehemently continued their slavery efforts, and thus found Twain’s writing to be atrocious and a personal insult to their society. Opponents of the moral and religious controversy issues The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has caused argue vehemently that if people in the 19th century were not referred to as obtuse for being religious, or pro-slavery mobs were not compared to a deceitful liar, the novel could have avoided its controversial status.
However, the novel was not a merely a basic story, it was a powerful mean of political propaganda, and had Twain left out what makes the book so controversial, the significance of said propaganda would have completely fallen flat, as there would have been no controversy to carry it. An example of anti- religious propaganda from the book would be: “When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he’d ever put in in the missionarying line. He said it warn’t no use talking, heathens don’t amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with” (Twain 129). This shows Twain’s mockery of the religious, and how they are fooled into giving an obvious con-man (at least from Huck’s perspective) money. This is also satirical because it the King is an apparent con artist to the reader, but the devout Christians can barely look beyond the religious veil that covers their eyes. During the 1840s, religion was thought to make one see the world clearer, so satire is played out by this. His abolition propaganda is demonstrated when Aunt Sally asked Huck if he was late because his boat had grounded. He responded with, “It warn’t the grounding—that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head.” Aunt Sally said, “Good gracious! anybody hurt?” Huck replied, “No’m. Killed a nigger.” Aunt Sally’s response was a prime example of satire and propaganda: “Well, it’s lucky; because
sometimes people do get hurt” (Twain 213). Aunt Sally, a kind, gentle women, doesn’t think of blacks as people, and while this may seem redundant to any pro-slavery activist, readers of the book would have realized along with Huck how much of a person Jim, a black man, truly is. Twain shows here that he was actively campaigning an anti-religion, abolition movement, and while the religious aspect is still strongly debated today, the abolition aspect is fully endorsed, and was endorsed by the many even during the time it was written. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, though accused of moral and religious controversy, could not have been without, mainly because of the image it was trying to portray and the propagandist denotation in the work. The moral and religious controversy lies in Twain’s negative connotation with religion and pro-slavery mobs, both of which were very important to the 19th century. In addition, the fact that the novel was written in an ironic sense to show people of the time period the ridiculousness of their beliefs and standards would have been lost had controversy not been present. Therefore, in order to have meaning behind any work, there will be controversy over opinion, and that is perhaps the most driving force of fame not only in works of literature, but in any field.