Intolerance Within the Novel the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The entire plot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is rooted on intolerance between different social groups. Without prejudice and intolerance The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would not have any of the antagonism or intercourse that makes the recital interesting. The prejudice and intolerance found in the book are the characteristics that make The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn great.

There were many groups that Clemens contrasted in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The interaction of these different social groups is what makes up the main plot of the novel. For the objective of discussion they have been broken down into five main sets of antithetic parties: people with high levels of melanin and people with low levels of melanin, rednecks and scholarly, children and adults, men and women, and finally, the Sheperdson’s and the Grangerford’s.

Whites and African Americans are the main two groups contrasted in the novel. Throughout the novel Clemens portrays Caucasians as a more educated group that is higher in society compared to the African Americans portrayed in the novel. The cardinal way that Clemens portrays African Americans as obsequious is through the colloquy that he assigns them. Their dialogue is composed of nothing but broken English. One example in the novel is this excerpt from the conversation between Jim the fugitive slave, and

Huckleberry about why Jim ran away, where Jim declares, “Well you see, it ‘uz dis way. Ole missus-dat’s Miss Watson-she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she woudn’ sell me down to Orleans.” Although this is the phonetic spelling of how some African Americans from the boondocks used to talk, Clemens only applied the argot to Blacks and not to Whites throughout the novel. There is not one sentence in the treatise spoken by an African American that is not comprised of broken

English. The but in spite of that, the broken English does add an entraining piece of culture to the milieu.

The next two groups Clemens contrasts are the rednecks and the scholarly. In the novel Clemens uses interaction between backwoods and more highly educated people as a vital part of the plot. The main usage of this mixing of two social groups is seen in the development of the two very entertaining characters simply called the duke and the king. These two characters are rednecks who pretend to be of a more scholarly background in order to cozen naive people along the banks of the Mississippi. In one instance the king and the duke fail miserably in trying to act more studiously when they perform