Point of View in Huckleberry Finn

In the episodic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, the author, uses the first person point of view to illustrate the book’s theme: man can often be inhumane to his fellow man. The use of first person throughout the story allows Twain to show events as they happen from Huck’s point of view. In the episode involving a feud between two families, the Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons, Twain uses Huck as a direct eyewitness to highlight the barbarity of the bloodshed. As Huck witnesses the violence he narrates, “It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain't a-going to tell all that happened -- it would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things” (171). Comments like this in the first person view help to dramatizes events. This allows the author to accent the theme which he is trying to convey within his story. Additionally, by using the first person point of view Twain can show the narrator interacting with other characters more closely and realistically. This makes it even more emotional when in some way a character is hurt during the novel. In an episode where two frauds pretend to be brothers of a dead man to get at his family’s fortune, the first person interaction develops a stronger bonding between Huck and the family’s daughters. This makes the cruelty in the theft of the money apparent to the reader as Huck realizes it himself: “I says to myself, this is a girl that I'm letting that old reptile rob her of her money!” (251). Still, Twain also uses first person to speak to the reader through Huck. In first person an author can have the narrating character retreat from a scene to discuss events. Twain does this often and shows his own feelings through Huck’s narration. For example after Huck witnesses the Tar and Feathering of the two frauds he comments, “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another” (325). This is an excellent example of the author clearly stating his own theme through Huck’s narration. Because of first person, Mark Twain was able to so grandly emphasize his meaningful theme of man’s mistreatment of one another, a theme which has existed since the dawn of the human race and still remains today.