As I read through Huckleberry Finn it seemed to me that Mark Twain was trying to ask a question with this book: Is the price of “civilization” worth it? As the book goes on it becomes more and more critical of the idea of civilization in general and the society of the south in particular, so much so that the idea and concept of an escape from civilization becomes a major theme of the novel.
At the beginning of the book Huck is forced to go to school and be civilized, and Jim is a slave about to be sold. Their escapes from their respective lives are cause massive improvements, Huck no longer has to go to school and church and can lounge all day on the raft, and Jim no longer has to do abusive back breaking work. Everytime they return to hamlets and villages of the south they are confronted with brutality and deceit, thugs, murderers and conmen seem to be abundant in Twains south. The novel sometimes feels almost like an anarchist critique of society leaving reader wondering, Is civilization really that much better than the idyll of Huck’s raft?
While I’m not about to abandon my life of electric luxury for a raft on the mississippi, with this novel, Twain makes that decision very appealing. Without the people around us forcing us to be part of their world the only human we would have to deal with is ourselves and that is quite an appealing concept. Is there a person in the world who has not felt overcome by the crowds and strangeness of others that confront us in modern life. I for one would be more than happy to get the same peace quiet and solitude that Huck and Jim have, at least for a short while.
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