In Mark Twain's novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
he talks about small town life in Southern Mississippi. He
portrays it as gossipy, a place where everyone knows
everyone and knows everyone else's business and doesn't care
to tell it. It is confining to Huck and Jim because there
is too much conforming to society. This is why they escape
In Chapter 18 when Huck goes into town dressed as a
girl to get information he talks to a woman who has only
lived there two weeks. She is able to tell him everything
that is going on despite this. This shows how in small
towns people aren't afraid to talk. Not only did the woman
freely give all the information to someone she didn't know,
someone had to tell her all about it in a two week tome
span. Twain is depicting small towns in a gossipy manner,
Twain is also characterizing small towns as confining
with a lot of conformation to society. When Huck goes to
live with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, they try to
turn him into someone he's not. They dress him up in fancy
clothes, try to teach him religion and try to take away all
of his individuality. They do this because this is what the
society in their small town accepts, and they don't want him
to be different than anyone else, because how would that
make them look. Huck however, escapes their attempts to
"sivilize" him by running away.
Twain shows that he has some contempt for small town
life and it's behaviors. Miss Watson is one of the main
people to show this because of her trying to change Huck.
Twain attempts to demonstrate this by portraying small town
life and gossipy and confining. His dislike is seen
especially through Huck who escapes the conformity to live
...