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Writers and authors always express their views in their work, even if they say that they separate their lives from their writings. Great writers need experience their work and later on reflect and write about it. Henry David Thoreau went out to Walden Pond to experience life away from distractions and really work on his writing. Wordsworth believed that writing is the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility. A writer needs to experience things in order to receive the emotion needed to trigger a thought.
From childhood, Clemens had always been around slaves. He was taught as a young person that slaves were quite different from white people and that slaves did not get to do certain things (Lutz 8). Even though Clemens had always talked to slaves and played with the slave children, he never once ate a meal with a slave. There was an obvious and clear issue of segregation in Missouri around the time that Clemens grew up.
This clear segregation has been found in many of his books. Along with many writers, his childhood and life experiences have influenced his writings. His novels and stories have been written after many years of observations. He saw the things that were occurring around him and wanted to be able to change it.
Twain wrote novels and short stories about slavery and racism in order to have the slightest effect and potentially influence others to the occurrences of both slavery and racism throughout the nation. At that time, Clemens had no idea that there was anything wrong with slavery. No one had taught him differently and the entire culture around him did not say anything about it. Even his father beat the slaves, sometimes for no good reason.
No one challenged the idea of slavery because everyone was all right with it. The papers claimed it to be a holy thing because there were slaves in the Bible (Lutz 9). Clemens early exposure to slavery appears in his later writing career through the characters and the fight against slavery. Clemens spent quite a bit of his life along the Mississippi River as a riverboat pilot. It was once his dream to get his pilot license and sail the Mississippi River. On April 9, 1859, Clemens had received his license (Lutz 22).
For almost two years, he sailed the Mississippi River and up until the time of the Civil War, he thought that he would be sailing for the rest of his life. As the Civil War broke out, many people took a strong stance on the issue of slavery. Clemens, only being twenty-five years old, did not take a stance on the issue either way. When Hannibal, Missouri, his hometown, was being occupied by Union troops, his friends attempted to convince Clemens to resist the Union troops, however, he refused to comply (Lutz 23). Clemens attempted not to take a side on the issue by not acting on anything that could deem as either for or against slavery. By May 1, 1861, after the attack on Fort Sumter, the country was a complete war.
Clemens was asked by his riverboat captain to stay with the boat and side with the Confederacy and the South. Clemens, still wishing to stay neutral in the Civil War, headed north as a passenger on the boat. The boat that he had traveled on was the last boat that the Union forces allowed to travel north (Lutz 24). Clemens decision had been made on which side he was going to be on in the Civil War. He was going to stay north for the time being and see what life there offered him. This time spent in the north undoubtedly reflected in his writings against slavery.
He revealed his thoughts and expresses his views on slavery through his writings during the post-Civil War period. Mark Twain seemed to not write the kind of literature that many people felt that should have been written, but told a story in a way that everyone could understand his views (Sloane 13). With Mark Twain's work Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the world is introduced into a work of writing that has greatly changed the modern American literature. Set in about 1845, this work of literature is about racism in any time period. The novel is about Clemens view on racism and his view on slavery.
When this book was written in about 1885, the nation was just recovering from the after effects of the Civil War. Lynching of blacks by whites were still occurring. Some people were still unaware of the racist attitudes and were not educated that racism was wrong. Throughout the novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain emphasizes the fact that people were unaware of the fact that the oppression of blacks was wrong. He shows that there needs to be better relations between the two races. He attempts to show this through the character Huck Finn (Sloane 104).
The setting of the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a river town in Mississippi. This story was placed around 1845. Slavery is still strong throughout the South, however there is a bit of mercantilism beginning to grow throughout (Sloane 105). The region set in was struggling with a couple of moral issues. The first issue was the problem of slavery and the abuse of the person in slavery. People did not see anything wrong with slavery and the demeaning of the slaves.
Even though the people in the region were all religious and that all people are humans and humans are Gods creation, the society's general attitude towards slaves were too strong for anyone to take a stand and go against it (Sloane 106). Huck Finn is the narrator of the novel. The story develops Huck Finn from a young child into a matured adult. Huck befriends a slave named Jim and this is where the novel begins. Huck is not a very happy person. He does not enjoy society and the people that live in it.
He is happiest when he is either by himself or with Jim (Robinson 42). So they decide to runaway making a decision that at that time would condemn him to spend an eternity in Hell. When he makes this decision he does not really think about spending that eternity in Hell. He thinks about the bad experiences at home and the need to just get away from everything (Huckleberry 38). After making his decision to runaway and help Jim escape, Huck begins to struggle with his conscience a bit (Huckleberry 42). Huck made his decision to assist Jim instead of turning him in.
Huck's conflict with his conscience begins with the fact that he was newly introduced into the religious culture of the society (Huckleberry 53). Being newly converted to a religious background, Huck has to fight his conscience and the newly found religious belief. Huck has a new sense of sin in the novel. Naturally after establishing religious beliefs, along comes the sense of sin. He wants to help Jim even though all of society says that it is not wrong to have slaves.
He also has an improved attitude toward others (Robinson 45). In the novel, Huck decides to not give the identity of Jim to some white men that stop them along the river. He feels that Jim has saved him multiple times, so he owes it to him not to turn him in (Robinson 46). During Huck and Jims escape, Huck begins to understand and appreciate Jim (Huckleberry 96). He begins to bridge the gap of whites and blacks. Huck begins to not think of Jim as a person lower than himself but more of an equal.
He discovers that Jim has regular human feelings that enable him stray away from his racist attitude. When Jim begins to feel bad that he had mistreated his daughter, Huck learns that Jim cares about his daughter, consequently to the belief at the time that blacks did not care for their young (Sloane 112). Huck closes the great distance in which people feel that blacks and whites cannot be friends. Twain's novel comes at a time where blacks were not being treated well. After the Reconstruction period, many African Americans experienced the worst of times.
Many freed slaves were subjected to the Jim Crow laws, which put the old standards on freed slaves. Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan arose and began the crude lynching of blacks. Even the government did not help solve the problems of racism. African Americans were put under strict voting reg...
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Research essay sample on View On Slavery In Mark Writing
