Mark Twain contributed to the realist movement in literature. While he used a wide array of ideas in his works such as satire and humor, he often stuck to explaining life in a realistic style, and his works clearly display this.

The novel The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is known as one of Twain's more famous works of all time. The story tells the tale of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as they become friends following Twain's first novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It follows the path of Huckleberry Finn, a young boy who has has unfortunately been given a drunk as a father, and Tom Sawyer, who often embark on adventures together throughout the story.

While it may seem as a simple story at first, the novel represents the hardships that were encountered during the time time it was wrote. Living on the Mississippi River, Huck is kidnapped and eventually faces hardships before escaping from his drunkard of a father. It continues on where Huck meets a running slave, and the hardships they face while trying to achieve freedom clearly represent that of a realist author.

Twain often uses racism, segregation, and other examples throughout the novel to represent how people felt at the time about these issues. Since Jim is African-American, he is often displayed as a character that represents how Americans may have felt about slavery and racial segregation at the time.

The novel itself was extremely controversial at first due to the themes that were involved throughout, but it eventually went on to be a classic, and is sometimes considered to be a breakthrough not only in American Literature, but in the issue of slavery itself. Twain wrote the book in a realist point of view, and laid the facts down the way they were, and truly gave a vivid representation of how life could of been on the Mississippi River at the time for a young boy, as well as a slave.

Twain also contributed other realist works, which also included most of the books in the Tom Sawyer series. Although Twain was a humorist and had a wide variety in styles of writing, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is seen as a classic in American Literature, as well as in realism.

Twain also used political satire in his later works. He often spoke out against the government, as well as the wars that they were taking part in at the time. He was an anti-imperialist, and often had conflicting views about the governments decisions during the 1900s.

Although Twain also used satire and humor throughout his career, Huckleberry Finn can be seen by many as his most influential novel of all time, and an obvious contributor to the realist movement.