Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The period that is most evident in this novel is that of realism. Realism is a style of writing, developed in the nineteenth century, that attempts to depict life accurately without idealizing or romanticizing it. Mark Twain depicts the adventures and life of Huck Finn in a realistic, straight-forward way. He did not try to ³idealize² or ³romanticize² his characters or their surroundings; instead he described them exactly how they would be in real life. Realists did not write about the long ago or far away, the realists concentrate often on contemporary life and on middle- and lower-class lives in particular (such as Huck Finns