Is Huckleberry Finn A Hero

Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Winston Churchill are all noted as great heroes around the world that have shaped history. But what exactly is a hero? Is a hero someone who does great deeds? Or is it someone who is tough, brave, and an adult? That may be true, but is not always the case. When Samuel Clemens and Theodore Dreiser wrote their novels, they chose some unlikely “heroes.” Samuel Clemens, the author of Huckleberry Finn, chose to have a scrawny teenage boy to be the “hero” of the novel. On the other hand, Theodore Dreiser, the author of Sister Carrie, chose a rural town girl to be his “hero.” Huckleberry Finn and Sister Carrie were written as picaresque novels. Although as picaresque novels they share similar
Huck Finn faces the pressure of conforming to the social norms of the white Americans. At the beginning of the novel, Huck does accept the social norms of the country at that time. This is evident when he refers to Jim as “nigger” and treats Jim as a nonhuman. According to Steven Mintz, Huck does hate the abolitionists, but eventually apologizes to Jim for all the trouble that he has caused (“Rethinking Huck,” no pag.). Huck eventually does break free from the social norms when he states, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (Clemens, Huckleberry Finn, 1418) for helping set Jim
Clemens was a regionalist writer which meant he wrote in the vernacular, the common speech, of the people. Being from Mississippi, Clemens especially used southern slang. As stated by Everett Emerson, “Mark Twain began his career as a humorist. In both Huckleberry Finn and all of his other better pieces, an important aspect of his work is the speaker's presentation of himself” (“Samuel Langhorne Clemens,” no pag.). Huck Finn and Carrie Meeber were not the traditional “hero” we associated it, they are considered to be heroes in their own ways. Even though Huckleberry Finn and Sister Carrie are both share the qualities of picaresque novels, they are dissimilar. The writing styles the novels were written in, the development of the rogue characters, and the society pressures that each rogue faced all factor into the differences of the two novels. Although these two novels are different, they help give us insight to what America was like less than 20 years