A home is normally portrayed as a dwelling in which a person feels safe and is able to be themselves. In Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Huck, the protagonist, thinks of the river as his home. All his life the shore has had negative connotations, but after he moves to the river, everything changes for the better. While on land, he is brutalized by his father, forced into conformity by Miss Watson, and a witness to a murder. While on the river, he finds his family and learns to relax.
There are many examples of family in the novel, some functional, others figurative. When Huck is on the land, he encounters many different types of families; including his relationship with his father, Pap. Pap has many views about how Huck should be raised, including his belief that Huck should not be taught to read; “You’re educated, too, they say; can read and write. You think you’re better’n your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t?... I’ll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school, I’ll tan you good” (18). Pap’s reaction to Huck’s education is appalling. As a father, he should only have Huck’s best interest at mind, not concentrating on keeping his child illiterate. Unfortunately, this is not the only example of familial dysfunction we see in the novel. When Huck loses Jim in the water, he washes up and is found by the Grangerfords. This animalistic family is feuding with a neighboring clan, the Shepherdsons, when neither side knows the actual root of the argument. These two families are heartless, and even though they seem civilized enough with their formalities and nice houses, they are savages. Death is a common occurrence, towards which an eyelash never batted. Huck meets his counterpart, Buck, and soon sees how deranged this family really is with the death of Mr. Grangerford. “[Buck] said his father and his two brothers was killed..Buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations-- the Shepherdsons were too strong for them” (97). Even though Huck feels like he fits in with the Grangerfords, he is horrified at the way they view the deaths of their kinsmen. When Buck dies, Huck becomes very upset, solely because one of the few people who he has cared about is dead. Although Huck feels an attachment to the Grangerfords, they do not function as a family and do not treat him accordingly.
Huck witnesses the depravity of human nature when experiences the feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. After Huck and Jim get split up on the Mississippi River, Huck spends some time living on the Grangerford’s estate. He befriends a Grangerford named Buck, and the two of them spend a lot of time together. Buck explains that the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons have been feuding for years, although no one quite remember why. Huck does not understand the point of a feud. Buck goes on and explains, “A feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in -- and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time” (Twain 107). Huck cannot comprehend the point of a feud, especially since in this case Buck cannot pinpoint the cause of the feud. Later, Buck died from gunshots from the guns of the Shepherdsons. Huck is devastat...
Huckleberry Finn’s conscience and morality about regarding Jim as a friend changes throughout the novel as their bond with each other increases. In most parts of the story,Huck has internal conflict about whether or not he should turn Jim in,but Huck keeps thinking about how bad he would feel afterward. In chapter 8,Huck finds that Jim is a runaway. Jim explains to Huck that he overheard Miss.Watson talking about how she was going to sell Jim to a slave trader in New Orleans for $800 which would separate Jim from his family. Plus,he and Jim are traveling together for the same reason;freedom. Huck is escaping his own home life from the Widow Douglas and his abusive father believing that they're keeping him from being who he wants to be.
When one is young they must learn from their parents how to behave. A child's parents impose society's unspoken rules in hope that one day their child will inuitivly decerne wrong from right and make decisions based on their own judgment. These moral and ethical decisions will affect one for their entire life. In Mark Twains, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is faced with the decision of choosing to regard all he has been taught to save a friend, or listen and obey the morals that he has been raised with. In making his decision he is able to look at the situation maturely and grow to understand the moral imbalances society has. Hucks' decisions show his integrity and strength as a person to choose what his heart tells him to do, over his head.
Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the greatest American novels ever written. The story is about Huck, a young boy who is coming of age and is escaping from his drunken father. Along the way he stumbles across Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who has run away because he overhead that he would be sold. Throughout the story, Huck is faced with the moral dilemma of whether or not to turn Jim in. Mark Twain has purposely placed these two polar opposites together in order to make a satire of the society's institution of slavery. Along the journey, Twain implies his values through Huck on slavery, the two-facedness of society, and represents ideas with the Mississippi River.
The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Samuel L. Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain, presents the evils of southern societies during the pre-Civil War period in America. The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Samuel L. Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain, presents the evils of southern societies during the pre-Civil War period in America. Clemens, a well-respected author, "began writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1876 and, after several stops and starts, completed it in 1883" (19). This novel revolves around the theme of slavery versus freedom, and was published at a time when most southern landowners still "owned" slaves.
The values of the society on land are of greed, violence, cruelty, and deception. Huck's father was one of these tasteless members of society. He was a drunken cruel person who only cared about finding Huck when he heard he was rich. He intended on getting all Huck's money. Huck's father states,
In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is a person to be admired. His caring attitudes and blunt honesty prove that he is a great person. Although Huck can be seen lying, cheating and stealing, he does these things out of necessity and as a result of his poor upbringing. These negative attributes don’t affect his overall high character.
At the beginning of Huck’s moral journey, Huck is no more than a young boy just starting to develop his understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Huck has grown up under the conflicting influences of his abusive, drunk father, Pap, and his guardian, Widow Douglas. The Widow tries her best to educate and civilize Huck, whereas Huck’s father tries to drag Huck down and feels that a son shouldn’t be better than a father. Up to this point in Huck’s life, Huck has never had to think about what is right or wrong; he was always told by the Widow or Pap. Huck’s moral journey begins when Huck breaks free from the influences of the Widow and Pap, and is finally able to begin to decide for himself what is right and wrong as well as to develop his own moral conscience.
Huck makes a clear point about his perspective about living in the Widow's civilized home when he states, "But it was rough living in a house all the time...and so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied" (1). Huck keeps this outlook on being restricted throughout the novel.
Often throughout a person’s life negative and positive influences are infused into one’s mind through friends, and family. In Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the lead character, grows up under the guidance of three different adult views on how a boy should behave. Huck, the lead character, learns helpful and damaging life lessons from the Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, Jim, and pap.
In Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the adults in Huck's life play an important role in the development of the plot. Pap, Huck's father, constantly abuses the boy, never allowing him to become an intelligent or decent human being. He beats and attacks Huck whenever they meet up, and tries to destroy Huck's chances of having a normal life. This situation is balanced by several good role models and parent figures for Huck. Jim, the runaway slave, embraces Huck like a son, and shares his wide ranging knowledge with him. He also protects Huck on the journey down the river. Widow Douglas is another good role model for Huck. She tries to civilize him and make him respectable to society, while also being caring and compassionate. There is a stark contrast in the ways Huck is treated by adults, and all have an affect on him.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn has experienced many internal problems throughout the novel. When it comes to slavery, he agrees with the philosophy of slavery, but sometimes he only follows that philosophy because that’s what he’s been taught in his society. “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”(Mark Twain) Huck is trying to approve his actions by following his conscience, whether society finds it right or wrong.
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn compares and contrasts the benefits and consequences of living in civilization versus living in the natural world, in the absence of a structured society (Gaither par.9). Twain portrays his preference for the natural world through its beneficial effects on the main character, Huckleberry Finn. Twain uses his story Huckleberry Finn to portray the simplicity of a life led without the constraining rules, regulations, and customs of modern society. He does this by allowing Huck’s life to face less difficulty, and gain moral and practical understanding when he is free from the strains of society and its backward ideals. Twain allows the natural world to foster Huck’s moral and ethical development by allowing him to learn his own code of ethics and ideals by his own experience and not by the influence of others.
Life on land was filled with many difficulties. There were many rules that Huck had to follow set by both the widow and his father. The widow’s main goal was to “civilize” Huck into a member of society. She expected Huck to go to school, wear clean clothes, sleep in his bed, and go to church. She just wanted him to be like a normal child of his age. Even though Huck bends the rules a bit and tries to sneak a smoke here and there, he eventually grows to like living under the widow’s protection. He proves this point when he says, "Living in a house, and sleeping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a littl...
Throughout Huckleberry Finn, Twain revisits the theme of family multiple times. A family consists of a mother, a father and children. However in a family it is just not about the people the family consists of but also love, discipline, respect, and looking out for each other. On the other hand in Huckleberry Finn barely any of the families meet the requirements of a typical family. For example Huck and Pap although they are family, Huck is subject to physical and mental abuse and never gets any love from Pap. “But by-and-by Pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all over with welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days” (Pg 32).This illustration of the drastic difference between a typical family and Twain’s portrayal of family shows the kind of family that is typical to Huck during that time.