Anyone who has read any of Mark Twain s books can clearly see that he has some real problems with the way that society works. In his novel entitled The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses a mixture of satire and sarcasm to mock the society in which he lives. I am not as good a writer as he but I too find some problems in the society in which I find myself. I went through the book and tried to find areas of society in which we both have difficulties. In this essay I go in depth with each issue. It is interesting that, even though we live in very different time periods, a lot of the same problems still exist.

The first issue I saw was that of religion. My personal views on religion are stronger than that of Twain s. I don t believe it is necessary to believe in God to live a happy life. I don t believe in God and I have never had any problem in my seventeen years on this planet that stem from my not believing. That is not to say that I don t feel very grateful and blessed for what I have. I just don t thank any God for it. I thank my Mom and Gary for their hard work to make sure that I have all the things I need.

I also think Christianity has some serious hypocrisy happening within it s ranks. They use God and the Bible to justify doing things that no God would ever justify himself. From the looting of an abortion clinic to the actual killing of a doctor performed abortions. The examples go on and on. No decent God would ever allow this.

Twain agrees with me to a certain extent. He agrees that it is not necessary to believe in God to lead a good quality life.Through the character of Huck we see Twain s dislike for a very rigid teaching of God and the Bible. Through Huck s character he shows that it is indeed possible for a person to lead a very fulfilling life without believing God. A good specific example of this is when Huck is tying to decide whether to go back and save Jim or just give him back to Miss Watson.

And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try quitting the kind of boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn t come. Why wouldn t they? I knowed very well they wouldn t come. I was because my heart weren t right; it was because I warn t square. I was letting on that I would give up sin, but inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all.

We can see here that Huck will never be a real believer in God because he will not let go of that sin. That big sin is that he knows what is the right thing to do: free Jim. But society in the form of the widow and Miss Watson have made it so that he has to fight a moral battle that someone like me would not even think twice about. Because of how I ve been raised, I would certainly free Jim.

The next issue I saw was that of slavery. It is as common as dirt in this novel. I personally don t have to deal with slavery but what I do have to deal with is racism. Every day somebody calls another a dirty name because of his or her race. We have so many names like nigger, beaner, chink, gook, and colored man, that we have a name for nearly every race on this planet. Hate crimes are also in abundance today. Whether it is Mexicans throwing rocks at a black person s car to two men beating a gay college kid to death; crimes against race or lifestyle rage on even today without so much as a glimmer of hope that they will stop in my lifetime. What people need to realize is that it is not all possible for us to be united as one race. People have had to retreat to their race for safety from other races so many times that it is now impossible for us to meld as one race because there are just too many of them and the world has become smaller through modern media and television. What we can do is appreciate the other races of this world by accepting each race s diverse intellect, culture, and customs.

Mark Twain is racist. There is no denying it. In all the books I have read by him he always presents black people in an inferior light. This is easily shown through the illustrations in this book. On page eight and three hundred and eleven we see two really good examples of how black people are portrayed. Perhaps he is a racist because this was the way he was brought up. In the era in which he lived, open racism was commonplace. However Twain realizes that we have gone too far when it comes to the point when we have enslaved another's race. A race that has nothing to look forward to except some extra scraps at the end of a eighteen hour-long work day. Through Jim we see that maybe not all niggers as inferior as they are made out to be.

I do believe that he cared as much for his people as white people do for therin.

This clearly illustrates that it is for a younger generation to get rid of slavery. It is too entrenched in the souls of racists that blacks are inferior to whites. He uses Huck throughout the book to show us that a younger person can see blacks for what they are; real human beings. Twain uses the character of Huck to illustrate that it is possible for a younger generation to see through all of that crap and find that blacks are just as human as the rest of us. We all bleed red.

Another major issue that I saw in this novel is a close relative to religion and that is morality, specifically honesty versus lying. Personally I don t think that lying is that horrible under certain circumstances. If you lie to protect yourself that is okay as long as you don't hurt anyone else in the process. Other than that I always tell the truth. I find that I feel dirty if I don t. However Huck doesn t seem to feel the same way as me. If he sees something or someone that might be potentially dangerous he just throws a lie at it. Lies Huck tells are called white lies because they really don t hurt anyone and they do save him a number of times. An example of this would be when he lies to the men on the raft . He lies about his name and where he comes from but it is only to get out of that situation and nothing bad comes of it. Nobody is hurt because of it. From the characters of the Duke and the King we see the real sinners. Through them we see what Twain thinks of real bad liars that make their living by duping society. At the same time he uses them as liars, he is also showing us how stupid and gullible people can be.

It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.

This is when the King is trying to cheat those poor people out of their inheritance by portraying himself as the deceased s brother. This is indeed a low thing to do. This clearly illustrates Twain s disdain for liars.

It is obvious that our society has some problems. What I have stated above does not nearly scratch the surface of what is wrong in society. It is my personal belief that society is bad for a reason. The reason is that if society is bad, then we as a people will continue to better ourselves as individuals and as one people. By watching as people lie and bust up cars and get in fights because of race, I learn quickly that I do not want to be like those people. I believe that there are so many people on this planet that it is impossible to please each and every single one of them. What we can do is try and reach a compromise that is a least fair to all the parties involved. For the most part I really like the way Mark Twain thinks. He and I agree on a lot of the same issues as far as society is concerned. He is not a subtle man and is pretty plain in his books and all of his writings as to what he believes on certain issues.

I find it interesting that we have a lot of the same views on society even we lived generations apart. This confirms another point in which I strongly believe. That is that we will always be basically the same. Sure, little details will change like technology but the core of the way we live will never change as long as we have a variety of people like Hitler and Mother Theresa in the same world. Humans don t like change as much as we sometimes seem to. This is evidenced by the way we think, walk, talk, and do nearly every other part of our life. That is a quote from Mark Twain that I read in a book about him. It has stuck with me because it rings true like a million church bells in my head. We cannot look to politicians to fix society's problems. All we can do is our best to fix them ourselves and then we just have to deal with it. Dealing with it makes our society stronger.