Societal Critique of the South- Huck Finn Notes

1. Racism
a. Black people were not considered human beings in the South. They were known better as the cotton picking, cow feeding illiterates of the white society. If a black man was wearing a nice pair of shoes or a clean-cut shirt, then all hell broke loose.
b. A black person was to never reach the standards of a white person: "When they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. […] I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?" (Twain 37).

2. Violence
a. As Huck continued his journey down the river, he came across two families with a strangely aggressive desire to end each other’s lives.
b. The Grangerford and the Shepardson family shared an unyielding hatred for one another without a valid reason: "They don't know, now, what the row was about in the first place" (120). All the families wanted were for the other to be killed and gone for good.
c. In Southern society, this warfare and death was accepted.

3. Working Together
a. “The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is- a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass” (159).
b. Throughout the South, families fought side by side to put an end to a dispute. They rallied themselves together with pride and courage, but forgot the logic behind the decision they made to fight.
c. Instead of settling issues with reasoning and fair judgment, the families of the South always resorted to violence.