Throughout the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, many different themes are portrayed. One of the most important themes in the novel is the issue of racism and slavery in the South. Twain depicts the South in the story as not as glorious as it's made out to be. Slavery in the South was nearly pervasive. During the story, Huck befriends an escaped slave named Jim, who had been previously owned by Miss Watson. Huck appears to be the least racist of the characters in Twain's story, but even he makes racial comments and gestures towards Jim and other slaves like Jim. Being that slavery is one of the major themes in not only the book, but in Southern society of Twain's lifetime, it is mentioned many times in the story, but not necessarily to make slaves look subhuman. Jim, for a slave, is very well educated, and is shown with many emotions. In the book, Jim is also seen through the negative aspect.
While Huck is really Jim's friend, and thinks more of him as a human being than what most Southerners think of slaves, Huck still manages to comment on the racism that Jim and other slaves face daily. One of these examples are seen when Huck says that even by covering Jim up with a quilt in the canoe, people would be able to see a black person from very far away. Although Huck doesn't think of this as racist, the comment truly is. It's also satirical because what Huck is saying is very true of the way people thought in the South. This is an example of how Huck is unaware of his own racism because he was just taught that it was the way he was supposed to think. At this point in the story, Huck still feels that blacks are essentially different from whites.
Another example of how Twain displays the theme of racism and slavery is another time that Huck makes a reference to the white superiority of the South. This occurs when Huck is talking to Tom's Aunt Sally about the explosion of the boat. Huck had been lying about the whole explosion because he...