The use and effect of dialect throughout "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is extremely effective. It helps to move us through the story and the emotions, even sometimes; it may provide us with comic relief.

Twain was said to have based Huck's speech pattern on a ten year old, African American boy he met in his hotel. During the course of the story, Twain used the word "nigger", not in a purely racist sense, since it was the term used to mean "black person." He showed the real racism in the way the characters regarded or disregarded African Americans. After the steamboat explosion when Aunt Sally asks if anyone had been hurt and Huck replies "No'm killed a nigger." Then Aunt Sally says "Well it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt." Here is where the racism is shown, in the southern perception of humanity and the fact...