The Historical Context of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is set in the pre-Civil War era South.  The Civil War took place about 30 years before the 1885 publication of the novel.  Slavery had ended, but racism was still rampant, as shown by things like the Jim Crow laws.  America was in the midst of the industrial revolution and there were extreme contrasts between rich and poor.  Mark Twain personally went through a somewhat huge moral transformation in the years leading up to writing this novel.  He believed that slavery was wrong and the America owed the black population repatriation. 

The two major literary movements of the day were realism and regionalism.  They attacked Romanticism and transcendentalism (hence, why Mark Twain hated Jane Austen so much).  The realist movement especially was supposed to be pragmatic, democratic and experimental.  Morality was a big idea of the time, popular in many of the day’s works.  The goal in their works was to report on the time in which they were written and set with honesty, above all else.  Writers began to draw ideas from their own experience, like how Huck Finn’s travels mirror Mark Twain’s own adventures travelling on the Mississippi River.  They focused on the real, the tangible, the common, the average, and the probable. 

They believed that the characters and setting of a novel were more important than the plot.  Part of this was called the Local Color Movement.  Local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region.  It focused on the norm of daily experience, such as stealing bread and travelling on a raft.  There is a lot of talk of geography in “Huckleberry Finn” and the entire book is written in dialect, which makes it the perfect example of this movement.

“Huckleberry Finn” is a coming of age novel, or bildungsroman.  It shows the moral growth of a comic character in a physically beautiful, yet morally ugly setting, which was a popular formula of the day.  It is also, like Don Quixote, a picturesque novel.  Both follow the adventures of a roguish hero.  It is episodic as he makes his many stops along the Mississippi River and carries the weighty juxtaposition of them escaping to freedom by travelling deeper into slave territory. 

19^th century authors were self conscious.  Not in the way that they had low self esteem, but in the way that meant that they had a desire to examine themselves.  They were very interested to know what their new and quickly changing country would look like and how the varied populations grew and communicated with one another.

Around the time when “Huckleberry Finn” was being written, the world was changing, and not just for the freed slaves.  The first photograph was taken around this time, and the first mappings of the West were drawn.  Also, the first transcontinental railroad was making it’s way across the country.  Of these changes, the most important on was photography, at least in terms of how it affected literature.

Photography allowed, for the first time in history, for a moment to be frozen in time in an instant.  People were able to use it as a social mirror of sorts.  Its inception started a small scientific and artistic revolution.  It was cheaper than a painting, and it was a much more reliable interpretation.  It was true and it was real.  No smudging to get rid of pockmarks or any of that nonsense.  There were massive social changes reflected in photography and literature.   In fact, it was the reason that the famous Matthew Brady was able to get such shocking and realistic footage of the Civil War and all of the destruction that it wreaked.   Photography, like literary regionalism and realism, showed the truth.

In 1995, Dr. Shelley Fishkins said, “Something new happened in Huck Finn that had never happened in American literature before.  It was a book…that served as a Declaration of Independence from the genteel English novel …[It] allowed a different kind of writing to happen: a clean, crisp, no-nonsense, earthly vernacular…it was a book that talked.  Huck’s voice, combined with Twain’s satiric genius, changed the shape of fiction in America, and African-American voices had a great deal to do with making it what it was.” 

One of the most difficult things to grasp in “Huckleberry Finn” in terms of literary context is the use of the word “nigger”.  It is used early and often by, not just the villains, but the protagonist as well.  Of course, the word is hardly strange today.  One might encounter it in popular music, comedy routines, or even African American literature like “The Piano Lesson” by August Wilson.

 But the key for “Huckleberry Finn” is that the word is employed in a satirical vein which seeks to expose the hypocrisy of Southern racism.  In one passage, for example, a person on shore observes an explosion aboard a riverboat and inquires as to whether anyone was killed.  The reply is that no one was serious injured, “just a nigger.”  Here, Twain is critiquing a Southern society that would deny African Americans their common humanity—and the word slave does not really have the same bite.

And Jim is treated as a man although it takes Huck awhile to understand this.  The novel is told from the perspective of Huck, who, as the product of a deformed society, has much to learn from Jim.  Huck discovers that Jim has escaped in order to avoid being separated from his family.  And Jim plans to use this freedom to reclaim his wife and children.  Huck concludes that that Jim loves his family just as much as any white man.  While Jim has no formal education, he displays considerable common sense.  For example, when Jim discusses King Solomon, he observes that the monarch enjoyed a harem and countless children.  Accordingly, he could suggest dividing a baby in two; a luxury which common people did not have.  Jim’s logic and courage offer a positive contrast with Twain’s depiction of Southern society.

Huck and Jim enjoy a degree of equality while on the raft and the river, but when they go ashore or the raft is invaded by the King and Duke, Huck and Jim encounter violence, corruption, greed, avarice, ignorance, and brutality.  And at the core of this depraved society is the institution of slavery.  In fact, some argue that Twain is unfairly harsh against Southern society.

However, this is the society which indoctrinated the young Samuel Clemens and Huckleberry Finn in racist ideology.  For Huck to accept Jim as a man, he must confront and reject the values of his society.  While Pap and the Widow Watson represent different social classes, they agree that slaves are property, not people.  While Pap is an illiterate alcoholic who abuses his son, he rants and raves about a black professor who is able to vote.   But Huck chooses to reject the values of Pap and the Sunday School teachings of Miss Watson.  I believe it was Twain himself who once said that “Huckleberry Finn” is a book where a boy’s heart goes to war with his conscience, and the conscience loses completely.

This is shown especially when Huck chooses to help Jim, even though he believes that it is morally wrong and that he will go to hell for it, indirectly showing that some of the Sunday school lessons have suck in, whether he wants them to or not. 

America, in this time, was a country torn between right and wrong.  They were torn between tradition and freedom, just like Huck.  Also just like Huck, they went with freedom in the end.