America contains a vast array of people who all have different ways of walking, talking, living, you name it. If Twain had homogenized every character’s speech and ignored dialectal differences it would have taken away from the story. As Huck and Jim (who each speak in unlike ways from each other and from the rest of the population of St. Petersburg) travel South down the Mississippi River, they pass through many different places, where the people are all parts of different socioeconomic groups, and therefore speak distinctly. As the story goes on, this change in how people talk highlights how much of a epic journey they’re on and how much of an array the people they interact with are. Inversely, the dialectal way of writing shows how similar Huck and Jim are, despite their separate ways of speaking. A conversation between the two of them is strange because it seems at times that they are speaking different languages, but they are still on the same page and are very good friends. Twain’s use of dialectal writing highlights his knowledge of the American people and both their differences and
America contains a vast array of people who all have different ways of walking, talking, living, you name it. If Twain had homogenized every character’s speech and ignored dialectal differences it would have taken away from the story. As Huck and Jim (who each speak in unlike ways from each other and from the rest of the population of St. Petersburg) travel South down the Mississippi River, they pass through many different places, where the people are all parts of different socioeconomic groups, and therefore speak distinctly. As the story goes on, this change in how people talk highlights how much of a epic journey they’re on and how much of an array the people they interact with are. Inversely, the dialectal way of writing shows how similar Huck and Jim are, despite their separate ways of speaking. A conversation between the two of them is strange because it seems at times that they are speaking different languages, but they are still on the same page and are very good friends. Twain’s use of dialectal writing highlights his knowledge of the American people and both their differences and