Political Propaganda: Huckleberry Finn and the Abolitionist Movement Jeanine Ancelet

"I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."

-MARK TWAIN, Concerning the Jews

Huckleberry Finn is the great American Classic, a delight for childish imagination and paradox for questioning adults. For most the novel is a masterpiece, a book that has been placed at the top of the "reader's choice list," but for some, namely the inquiring minds within the literary circle, the novel has become a never-ending topic of debate, the playing board in a game of intellectual dominance. Unable to heed Twain's warning at the beginning of the novel, and perhaps enticed by it, hoards of writers have turned the pages of Huckleberry Finn inside out, and, in some cases, added extra, in search of an underlying moral. In this essay, I will join the ranks of other writers, and spill on to the pages my moral interpretation of the disputed classic. By unearthing what critic James Phelan would call a "covert text," I will prove that Huckleberry Finn is a historical metaphor, representing the hypocrisy,...