Mark Twain's Flaws

“All modern American Literature comes from Huckleberry Finn.” ~Ernest Hemingway. Mark Twain is quite possibly the father of the American novel. The books he wrote were and still are popular among the rich and the poor alike. He introduced the ‘epic adventure’ style, (like the Iliad and the Odyssey) into American literature. Throughout his long and eventful life, Twain saw many flaws in his society and reflected upon them in his writing. His most popular and criticized novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, emulates these flaws. In the novel Twain criticizes the mind-set of the Gilded Age, shows the lack of compassion in the white society versus that shown in black society and ridicules human greediness.
On one of Huck’s adventures he
Pap is always beating Huck and making him feel bad about himself. The old man does not even care about Huck and sometimes forgets that he locked him in the cabin while he is out drinking. This lack of compassion from Pap towards Huck is also foiled by Jim’s fatherly love towards his children. Huck says “he [is] often moaning and mourning” that he would not get to see his “Po’ little ‘Lizabeth” and “Po’ little Johnny”(154), again. Jim loves his children so much that when he becomes freed, he is going to save enough money to buy his children, and if they’re not for sale then he is going to steal them. A very distinctive attribute about Jim that makes him a better father figure than Pap is he feels great remorse for the one time he acted “ornery” towards his deft daughter and smacked her, whereas Pap has abused Huck countless times and feels no regret for his actions. Jim, a black slave, showing compassion where whites do not further displays the backwardness of Twain’s society. Whites were supposed to be civilized and blacks were supposed to be savages, yet it was the opposite. Jim is a caring, loving and compassionate man and the Gangerfords, Shepherdsons, and Pap are all moral less
This ancient Akan proverb is true of the society in Huckleberry Finn. Not only did Twain’s society lack compassion, they also were money hungry and greedy. The King and the Duke are symbolic representations of the human greediness Twain saw in his society. These men will do anything for money and are not afraid to con anyone. They will con a whole town of people; three times with the same con. They are not afraid to con mourning sisters, for their inheritance money. These two are so greedy that they cannot be content with just the will money, but decide to sell all the sister’s rightful property as well: “What! And not sell out the rest o’ the property? March off like a passel of fools and leave eight or nine thousand dollars worth o’ property layin’ around jess sufferen’ to be scooped in?”(177). The worst of all, they con a benefactor¹ to them; they sell Jim in for a reward of just forty dollars after he has treated them like royalty for so long. The tarring and feathering of the King and the Duke in the end is Twain’s way of saying ‘what goes around, comes around’ and these two men deserve it. The two men are great examples of the covetousness that Twain was so disgusted