“the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”- Meaning of a “Sivilized” Society

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Many would agree with Earnest Hemingway’s broad statement, but it takes a keen eye to detect and appreciate the brilliant satire that Twain has interwoven throughout his novel. The most prominent topic of his irony is society. Twain questions the “civilized” nature of white society, which heavily idolizes slavery. Huckleberry is given nothing but contradictory ideas about what kind of boy he should be---on one side he has the “sivilized” white members of society who seek to “improve” him, but are not always the best people. On the other hand, Jim, whose character is just a lowly slave, is portrayed to be humane and kind in comparison to his superior counterparts. It is emphasized throughout the novel that Jim, a slave, is the better half of society, for Huck turns out to be an admirable character by the end of the novel, despite his white upbringing—this is due to the time that he has spent with Jim on their adventures. Mark Twain effectively interweaves his heavy criticism of what a “civil society” is thought to be in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, a satire of the American upper-middle class society in the mid-nineteenth century. The numerous characters in the novel that are seen as superior in society turn out to have twisted and hypocritical personalities—their actions have acceptable intentions, but their true natures are revealed with their interactions with other characters. Widow Douglas and Ms. Watson are the two sisters who adopt Huck and make their attempts at “sivilizing” him at the beginning of the novel. Though they seem like good, religious women helping a boy with nowhere else to go, they are slave owners. This is not a big deal, for a large portion of the population were slave owners at the time, but Ms. Watson was planning on illegally selling Jim in New Orleans for $800, as said on page 51. No matter how innocent these women may seem, they are