Pap the Drunk, Scourge of Fathers

       Pap is the nearly fifty-year-old father of Huckleberry Finn who likes to gamble and drink. To Huck, Pap is the embodiment of evil itself. Because Twain gave no background information as why Pap is the way he is in the book, his role is primarily symbolic. Twain described Pap as being very pale white and being very evil at the same time is a commentary on society. Pap represented all the evils that can be found in white society: he is illiterate, ignorant, violent, and very racist. When he learned of the mixed-race man that visited the town, he is enraged that a man like that gets to vote in the state of Ohio. Compared to Pap, the mixed-race man is very knowledgeable, clean, and politically minded. Twain's descriptions of these characters overturned the traditional view of white superiority.