Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Review

Throughout the novel by Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his use of selfishness and selflessness as the defining factors of human communion are underscored by the novels’ satire, intended as a condemnation of slavery and its legacy. So, the Duke and King lie to make money and con people. While Huck lies to protect himself and Jim. In doing so, they are just both trying to keep themselves alive. The Duke and King have no humanity but use others humanity to their advantage while Huck tries to preserve it. The Duke and King use fraud to deceive people’s trust and to earn money. They use fraud to bring happiness to people like in selling fake medicine, uncertified medicine, they say it takes tartar off peoples teeth. Not only does this medicine do that, it also takes off their enamel. They run for their lives and meet Huck and Jim. Revival day is another good example. King says he is a pirate “regrets his past,” says he needs a donation to help his people convert to “good” ones like what happened to him. The townspeople are obsessed with the spirit of repentance, so easily collect $87. But also they take advantage of those that are grieving like the Wilks sisters. They fake being Harvey and William Wilks; with the townspeople sympathy over Peter Wilks death, they are easily believed to be the real ones and try to steal all the Wilks’ gold and money. Huck turns away from everything he has been taught, like that slaves are less than human, or like when he helps Jim escape. Jim talks about how he misses his family in Hucks thoughts that makes Jim human, not inhuman as Society has always told Huck. In doing so, Huck makes conclusions that contradict what society say. When Huck first meets the Duke and King his thoughts are, “It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings or dukes, at all, but just low-down humbags and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on, kept it to myself; it’s the way; then you don’t have no quarrels, and don’t get into trouble.” (94-95) In the end they both end up using each other. The Duke and King blackmail Huck into complying and Huck follows through to help and protect Jim, “Then he showed us another little job he printed and hadn’t charged for because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger, with a bundle on a stick, over his shoulder, and ‘$200 reward’ under it the reading was all about Jim and just described him to the dot.” (101) Huck was using them to get down the river with Jim. In their attempts to steal the inheritance from the orphaned children, the Duke and King are incapable of sympathy, and thus excluded from any true communion with humanity, whereas Huck learns to understand others’ suffering. Huck’s willingness to rebel against society’s demand that Jim be returned to slavery and his discomfort with Tom’s insistence that Jim be treated as a toy rather than a human show’s Huck’s growth from selfishness into a full and mature humanity.