The Use Of Satire And Allusions in Mark Twain’s Novel “The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer”

August 17, 2021 by Essay Writer

The huge allusion in the book has to be freedom. Freedom is something that Jim obviously wants and Huck, a white boy who is not raised correctly, wants to get away from his drunken father and all of the proper manners and speaking properly like he is expected to. In the beginning of the book and in the end Huck believes that Tom Sawyer has it all figured out because of his education. After Huck had ran away the first time Tom told him to come back and join his group of robbers. That gang falls apart in about a month. Huck doesn’t have a great attention span because of the fact that the Widow tries to teach him about Moses, but he loses interest when he realizes that Moses is dead. When he is fed up with it he just runs away from it. Huck was a boy who loved to pull practical jokes and to try and trick people just like he did in chapter two with Jim’s hat. Due to the fact that Jim is an uneducated slave he thinks that a witch came through and did but it was just Tom and Huck being mean. Tom is a terrible role model for Huck but Huck blindly does whatever Tom want and forgets about anything he learns o his adventures with Jim. Huck battles with the fact that he has to decide between social justice or as his widow tells him going to hell.

Throughout the book the Mississippi river is portrayed as being the perfect place to be, especially for Jim and Huck, to them it is the allusion of freedom and that raft represents the home full of safety. Some satire in the book happened when they get lost in the fog, Huck plays a trick on Jim and he takes it very seriously then Huck realizes that Jim cares about him he feels bad but he knows he should not feel bad, because of the way society is and the way they view slaves. So while Huck may feel bad he still has this internal conflict that he has to battle through all the time when he is with Jim. There is the thing that society thinks is right and that would be to turn Jim in but he made an actual connection with Jim throughout the book. Jim changed him, Huck is just a confused little boy who just needs to be steered in the right direction. Like for example whenever Tom pops up Huck turns right back into his former self, which would be tricking people he cared about and other things like that.

The river symbolizes a peaceful place for the author because of how he loved to steamboat in the Mississippi River while this seems like a minor detail in the life of the writer but it actually plays a huge role in the book. The river to Huck and Jim represents this place where they can’t be caught where they are no longer scared to be alive on the run. They seemed to love being on the island because in the book both characters agree that they love living on this island but it was simply way to close to civilization. They would have gotten caught if they had stayed there. When Huck fakes his own death he is finally in a peaceful part of his life but when the boat goes by and he sees that they are throwing very high quality bread he feels bad that he has upset some of his elders. Then he meets Jim right there on the island and Jim explains his situation and why he ran away. Jim throughout the book acts almost like a father figure to Huck because he teaches him and protects. Interestingly Huck has to pretend to be a girl in order to get information on land without being caught. But he is terrible at being a girl and fails miserably he even forgot to do the voice. He gives the lady a fake name and occupation he does not get into any trouble. Along their raft ride they feel that it was wrong to steal so they let some stuff go. If society had treated them so awfully that they had to run away, then why do they feel bad about stealing?

Huck behind Jim’s back goes and explores a wrecked steamboat and he finds robbers there and he tries to do the right thing by telling Jim we need to stop them. Then Jim says something even worse their raft had broken loose and floated away. So they end up stealing the robber’s boat with some of the stuff the robbers stole and once again Huck feels bad for leaving the robbers stranded. He even goes on land and convinces someone to go looking for them and he felt good about doing that good deed. It shows growth in Huck’s character from a little childish boy to a more caring slightly less childish boy. It would not be long before Huck turned back into a childish trickster again. When he tried to convince Jim that him floating away from Huck was all a dream when it actually happened in real life. Jim gets mad at Huck for making a fool out of. This would be a use of satire by the author because of the way that it ashamed the Huck for making Jim worried about not finding Huck again. Huck does apologize for his mistake.

Now the time has come where Huck must listen to what everyone else has told or listen to Jim ad help him escape. Huck knows that according to Miss Watson he would go to hell for helping a slave run away. Huck was about to give Jim up until Jim said that Huck was his only friend. But Huck lies to the guards and they end up giving Huck 40 dollars in gold once again Huck feels bad but does nothing about it this time because he knew he saved Jim. Huck and Jim end up getting split up but when Huck gets on shore he is surrounded by dogs and immediately a man calls them off and introduces himself. He is interrogated basically then taken in to the household. Huck gets very scared of the feud that these two families have with each other imagine having to bring a rifle to church just so that the other family will not kill your entire family now that is scary. Huck and Jim end up reuniting and continue their adventure along the river. Now Jim is captured and Tom is trying to make this elaborate stupid plan and of course Huck just seems to be following along just like normal whenever Tom is around Huck has to play dumb and just do whatever Tom says. It is ironic how Huck fails to listen to the actual good person and plays tricks on him. But with Tom it is almost like he is trying to fit in with the rest of the group. He is trying to be cool trying to fit in with society but to be perfectly honest society was not that great back then and Huck was very close to realizing that slavery was wrong and that he should join their side instead of turning them in. He knows that but Tom ruins him consistently. While Jim brings out this other side of Huck the one that the reader wants to see more of the one reader wants to wrap this book up correctly. Tom, Huck, and Jim return, in many ways, to what they played at the beginning of the novel. Tom once again gets caught up in his romantic ideas of amazingly rescuing Jim, which, though funny, are annoying when we see how long they delay Jim’s escape. He gets so involved in his imagination that he and Huck almost forget why they are going through so much trouble. Huck, for his part, returns to the same follower status in relation to Tom that he held at the beginning of the novel. Normally the voice of reason and conscience in his dealings with Tom, he seems to have totally forgotten his principles and his friendship with Jim. Both Tom and Huck get so in to their game that they seem to forget that slave are human beings. To them, he becomes almost an object or a prop, to the extent that they even ask him in all seriousness to share his quarters with snakes and rats. Imprisoned in the shed, Jim is just as captive and powerless as he was before he originally escaped there is nothing he can do but hope that Huck and Tom’s game works out.

All in all, the author uses satire and allusions to entice the reader and get them to think about this book on another level. To try and make the reader think.

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