historical+parallel

The grifting of innocent people during the Second Great Awakening parallels very closely with a popular institution in the 1880s: the circus. The circus industry came of age during the late 1800s, and along with its rise came the rise of the big names such as Barnum and Bailey and the Ringling Bros. The circus became wildly popular, and millions of Americans flocked to see the seeminly harmless spectacles. Below the surface however, there was much grifting of innocent people. One notorious case was the Wallace circus, which was bloated with scam artists who worked tirelessly to trick Americans out of their money. Mark Twain undoubtedly went to circuses and saw the exploitation of countless of Americans, just like during the Second Great Awakening. His distate for this practice surely led him to include the revival scene in __Huckleberry Finn,__ so he could satirize that part of society too.