“THE PEOPLE attempting to find a motive in this story will be prosecuted; those who try to find a morality there will be banished; people who try to find a plot there will be shot. This quote is from Mark Twain at the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and it shows Mark Twain's humor, while setting the tone of the book. This book was published in the 1880s, about twenty years after the Civil War, but it showed that there were still signs of discrimination against African Americans. The main themes of this story are racism and slavery, superstitions, and the issue of conforming to society to please others. The theme of the story largely revolves around the ideas of racism and slavery and is conveyed through Huck's relationship with Jim, who is an escaped slave. Huckleberry Finn helped Jim escape because he found him on an island and believed that Jim was a person like everyone else, he was equal. Jim ran away from his owner, Miss Watson, because she planned to sell him for $800 on the Mississippi River. Jim ran away to get money to free his family from slavery. Other people treated Jim as property and tried to turn him in for a reward. At the end of the story, it turns out that Jim had been freed because Miss Watson had died and given him his freedom in her will. Tom Sawyer said: "They have no RIGHT to silence him! FUCK! - and don't waste a minute. Free him! He is not a slave; he is as free as any creature who walks on this earth! (Twain, Chapter 42) Racism and slavery were a very large part of American culture in the 1800s. Since it was part of the culture, not everyone who supported it was actually bad people; it was just the way they were raised until middle of paper......getting used to it and getting used to going to school. The main themes of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were slavery and racism and problems with conforming to society. Another important theme was that of superstitions. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written during the realism literary movement. Being part of the Realism movement gave the story a more realistic ending and all the characters end up happy. Mark Twain's period also affected the novel because it allowed the controversial subject of slavery to be a main theme. In his time, Mark Twain was a radical thinker who believed that slaves were not property, but people and should be treated as equals. In the words of Frances Wright: “Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no freedom without it. If you want to know more about themes, you should really read this book.