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Regionalism In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Decent Essays

Regionalism seeks to capture the essence of life in the various regions of the nation, attempting to capture customs, dress, speech, and other local differences. Between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century, this mode of writing became dominant in American Literature. Regionalism Literature incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences. In this time period, the North and the South had broad differences as they were in opposite regions. Mark Twain was one of the most prominent writers who depicted regionalist characteristics in his writing by the implementation of racial persecution, language, and the physical place. Regionalist writing can in many ways provoke the harshness of society. Regionalism is important as …show more content…

By this, we can place him under the subcategory of the perfect regional character. Huck says, "... we was always naked day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us... the new clothes Buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on clothes, nohow." Twain used the main character to show what speech and conversation would sound like from a 13 year old boy, who was of lower class and uneducated. What Twain accomplished in doing this is allowing the reader in understanding the language Huck spoke and his perspective on life and society. Huck and Jim, especially Jim, showed many examples of eye dialect in the novel. Eye dialect is the representation of standard pronunciations by unconventional spellings. In one scene Jim uses this form of dialect when he says "Dat's de good ole Cairo at 'las, his knows it." The conventional spelling of the following words are; Dat's (That's), de (the), Ole (old), his …show more content…

Furthermore, he contradicts the norm of the time by showing the strong bond between Huck and Jim. In of the scenes, Huck gets a job save enough money to free Jim. Huck says, "And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again..." In chapter 1, Huck depicts the widow as a devoted Christian who forced him upon many rituals. For instance, he "...had to wait for the widow to tuck her head and grumble over the victuals, though there really nothing the matter with them." However, through Huck's blatant honesty and humour comments we see her tendency to cuss. Huck asserts that "she also called me a lot of other names too...." she adds more irony to this agitating unholylike behavior by smoking snuff even while preaching to Huck that he is not allowed to do such things. Mark shows the religious satire and especially hypocrisy of southern whites, who are supposed to set an example of morality yet end up contradicting

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