How Did Huckleberry Finn Break The Law

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the main characters clearly do not play by the rules. In both novels, the protagonists commit their fair share of crimes. Although many of their actions are against the law, the characters are not aiming to cause harm to anyone. By committing some of these crimes, they are attempting to right a wrong, even if that means breaking the law. The point of instituting laws is to uphold morals; to keep people safe and make sure things are as fair as they can be. In some situations, though, as demonstrated by real-life historical events like segregation and by characters like Tom Joad and Huckleberry Finn, the law itself is not so moral. Both Twain's and Steinbeck's
While their actions should not be considered pure, none of them were unsolicited acts of malice. In his life up to the end of the The Grapes of Wrath, Joad had killed two men. Being responsible for the death of another person is no small crime, and should not be treated as such, but these were not random, cold-blooded murders. The first was an act of self-defense after Joad was stabbed in a fight, and the other was in retaliation after Joad witnessed his friend being beaten to death. In Huckleberry Finn, Huck commits many crimes, such as stealing and harboring a fugitive slave. For many of his crimes, Huck honestly thinks nothing of them. He is a little boy who has grown up with an unfit, abusive father practically in the streets. He and his friend Tom Sawyer play games where they are gangs of murderers and thieves for fun. Ironically, the only things Huck feels guilty about is helping Jim to escape, which is actually a noble thing to do. This is Twain's commentary about how backward society views on slavery and treatment of African Americans in general were. During the time of segregation, people truly felt that it was right for different races to be separated. They did not see how unequally people were treated and genuinely thought that people were actually "separate but equal." "(Whites in the South) may call a Negro a 'Nigra' or a 'Nigger,'" LIFE bluntly noted at one point in the article, and followed this with the assertion that the same people who routinely use those inflammatory terms 'have long since ceased meaning any harm or insult by it'" (Cosgrove.) LIFE magazine published an article stating that people who used such derogatory terms to describe African Americans did not think it was insulting. This shows how unaware people were of the situation at the time. In Huckleberry Finn, it seems like Huck's view of slavery is exaggerated to emphasize the