The Two Hearts of Society

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck pretends to be a girl and goes to Mrs. Loftus’ house to see what’s going on in the town. Mrs. Loftus finds out that Huck is a boy and asks him why he is here. Huck tells her that he ran away from his uncle’s farm, and Mrs. Loftus wants to help Huck. On the other hand, she wants to capture Jim, who is a runaway slave, to get the prize.

In this scene, we can see the two sides of society through Mrs. Loftus. Because of her cultural background, she considers capturing Jim from slavery as a good deed, which is to take away a human being’s freedom. But she also wants to help a poor white guy who also tries a human being’s freedom by running away from the farmer! But she does not realize that she is racist because she is so steeped in her culture. It shows that how generous the society was towards white people, and how harsh the people were to slaves. We also see that Mrs. Loftus tries to catch Jim, who has a price of two hundred dollars. She wants to get the award, but she wants to help Huck who has no award. Thus, Mrs. Loftus’ two faces about the award shows people’s greed as well.