Mark Twain once described his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as "a struggle between a healthy mind and a warped conscience." Throughout the novel, Huck struggles with the disparity between his developing morality and the twisted conscience of his society. In doing so, he distances himself further from society, both physically and mentally, eventually abandoning it to travel to the western frontier. By presenting Huck, an outsider,'s disgust with the state of society, Mark Twain is effectively able to criticize the intolerance and hypocrisy of the South. In doing so, Twain asserts that to exist as a truly moral being, one must escape the shackles of a diseased society. As Huck travels along the Mississippi River, Twain presents the hypocrisy and immorality of antebellum Southern society. Traveling from his abusive home, Huck encounters criminals, shipwrecks, and even murder before finding himself stranded with the Grangerford family. The Grangerfords engage in a bloody feud with the rival Shepherdson family, both sides killing each other for no reason other than the continuation of the feud (Twain 127). Although Huck encounters many groups on his journey, perhaps none encapsulate Twain's critique of society so well as the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. Despite the fact that neither family truly understands the origins of the feud, they continue to fight, hypocritically ignoring the sermons of “brotherly love” heard in a church filled with a veritable arsenal of ammunition (Twain 129). Twain's fiercest criticism is evident in his cruel depiction of the body count in the feud; Huck experiences the death of Buck, a boy about his age, and the reader learns of the deaths of others Grangerford, friend... in the center of the card... you are free from social mores and empathically understand others as they really are, especially the runaway slave Jim, with whom he travels. Huck's final realization that he can never exist in this sick society pushes him to "leave" for the western frontier. Although Huck's world may seem alien to modern readers, today's "sivilized" society still grapples with injustice, intolerance, and hypocrisy. It is the responsibility of every ethical citizen to examine the mores of the society in which he lives and to break with those mores if they conflict with his own moral understanding. Whether it is the year 1820 or 2014, one must do one's best to treat others with the respect they deserve, and thus follow Huck's example of breaking away from a sick society by any means possible, even if there are no borders available to head towards. run away.