During the realistic movement authors wrote novels depicting the world as it really was. Considered the master realist, Twain was an expert at creating a realistic novel in which true to life characters would have real problems concerning issues of the time period. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Twain tells the story of a young Southern boy's adventures and his discovery of how society works. Although on the surface the novel seems simplistic, it holds many different layers. Besides being a realistic novel, many elements satire the time in which it takes place and the events that were occurring at the time. Satire is an important element in this story because it makes the novel humorous, therefore highlighting how ridicules some of the events that happened in the time were. Morality is also an issue that Huck has to deal with in the novel. Twain uses Hucks beliefs to give the reader insight into the moral climate of the time. .
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a realistic novel. Realism is an attempt of an author to represent things as they really are. Realism ,however, is a broad movement in literary history, it consists of two other parts, regionalism and naturalism. Regionalism expresses things as they were in a certain region. In regionalist pieces, the author writes in a certain dialect, that of the region. Another movement that evolved out of realism is naturalism. Naturalist, like realists, depicted things true to life, however, unlike realists, naturalists had a scientific view on life. They believe that a persons fate was deterimined by the environment, heredity and chance. .
Twain's novel is an exemplifies realism and more specifically regionalism because of its setting, plot, and the dialect which is used. First the setting of the novel demonstrates an aspect of realism. The novel is set in St. Petersberg, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River this makes the novel realistic because the setting is natural, that is to say it is an actual town, not a fictional spot made up just for the story.
