“That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth” (1). Those are among the first lines in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so it’s obvious from the very beginning that the truth, or lack thereof, is a major theme in the book.
Huckleberry Finn is a liar throughout the whole novel but unlike other characters, his lies seem justified and moral to the reader because they are meant to protect himself and Jim and are not meant to hurt anybody.
Mark Twain shows four types of lies in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: vicious and self-serving lies, harmless lies, childish lies, and Huck’s noble lies.
An example of lying is presented right at the beginning. After Tom and Huck play a joke on him, Jim lies to all the other slaves about how his hat got taken of his head and put on a tree limb above him while he was sleeping. He tells an incredible yarn about some kind of spirits visiting him, gaining him an almost-celebrity status among the slaves. Some may argue that this is a self-serving lie. Although it is harmless to others, it certainly isn’t a noble lie. Another set of harmless, somewhat clever, lies Jim tells are of his famous hairball. He claims it can predict the future and only he can tell what it’s saying. Not only that, but this hairball doesn’t work unless Jim gets paid first.
The king of childish lies would definitely be Tom Sawyer. Through Tom’s ridiculous lies, Mark Twain makes the reader begin to hate this impractical, unrealistic, unoriginal adolescent. His immature lies are to gain a sense of adventure like in his books and they occasionally hurt people. Tom tricks Huck into coming with him to see the caravan of “A-rabs a...
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... get some money too, and no one is hurt.
Once again, Huck’s lies are noble, Tom’s are childish, Jim’s are harmless, and the Duke and King’s are vicious and self-serving.
The above are not the only lies that are told in this story. Huck is actually quite good at telling lies and continues to tell them up until the end of the story, but what the majority of Huck's lies have in common is that they protect both him and Jim from the society of southerners that he has turned his back on. His lies are noble, when no other characters’ lies in the novel are. Huck chooses to follow what he feels in his heart rather that what he has been taught by those around him. The lies he tells are told so that he can continue in his search for happiness, truth, and freedom. For the most part Huck’s lies are morally good which may seem like a contradiction, but as Twain shows, is not.
He gets into all sorts of conflicts that force him to battle and work his way out of them, and in turn, they propel his moral position’s evolvement. It is especially hard on Huck when it comes time to resolving moral dilemmas. He is always stuck between making his own moral decisions, be it conventional or not, or allowing influencers, his father, the widow, and society, to make the decisions for him. He can never let go of the guilt associated with taking the unconventional path and rejecting what society upholds because that is all he has ever been taught in his life. That is why it is hard to apologize to Jim at first, but given time Huck is able to muster the courage to do so because that is the right thing to do even when society says so otherwise. The same goes for helping a slave, such as Jim, escape to a free state where he can find the opportunity to reunite with his family. Ultimately, he violates the demands of society to do what is right and not contribute to the enslavement of another human being. And it is not until the end of the novel that Huck no longer views his decisions as moral failings, but instead as moral triumph because he stayed true to himself and not once did he allow society to dictate his
Mark Twain throughout the book showed Huckleberry Finns personal growth on how he started from the bottom as a lonely, racist, immature kid who knew nothing to where he is now, by finally breaking away from society’s values he was taught in the beginning. He has alienated himself from the from that society and revealed how in fact these values were hypocritical. He realized that he can choose his own morals and that the one he chooses is the correct one.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is a novel about a young man's search for identity. Huckleberry Finn goes through some changes and learns some life lessons throughout his journey. Huck changes from being just an immature boy at the beginning of the novel to being a more mature man who looks at things in a different perspective now.
Later, the two men lie to Huck and Jim. Huck does not say a thing, though he realizes they are lying. But I never said anything. never let on; keep it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no. quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. I have no objections, long as.
Lies and deceit is a theme often seen in children’s books giving a lesson on the consequences they create, but instead, the authors have placed them in adult literature, for all know adults cannot resist the temptation as well. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there are lies after ...
...eliable narrator; he begins his novel by showing that he is a character who sees things for what they really are. He acknowledges that some of the stories about himself and Tom Sawyer are exaggerated, and even suggests that Tom Sawyer was an unreliable narrator, “that book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.” (Twain, page 4.) It seems possible for the reader to trust Huck though, especially as he himself points out that he has no reason to exaggerate his tale. “I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different.” (Twain, page 14.) Huckleberry Finn then, is indeed, a fairly reliable narrator; he has no need to exaggerate parts of his tale and therefore he tells his story exactly as it happened, he sees and tells the truth within his tale.
Huck struggles with this . Lying is often thought to be bad but in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck’s lies seem justified and most are meant to protect himself or those that he cares for most.
In Mark Twain’s book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the character Huck is trying to figure out the struggles of adulthood while also trying to maintain his childlike wonders. Huck experiences many eye opening events, forcing him to grow up and start his adult life at a young age. From having an abusive father, floating down the river with an unlikely friend, and breaking away from society norms, his life was far from childlike dreams. In Twain’s novel, Huck’s experience with honesty, trickery, and perspective help develop the coming of age theme.
Huck Finn, the main character of Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, travels down the Mississippi River in search of personal truth and freedom, which ironically he achieves by living a lie. Huck's journey causes him to wear a variety of disguises and masks to survive. Unfortunately however, the people he meets along the way wear disguises which they use to deceive and cheat the same society that Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, are trying to escape from. Jim must use his own cleverness, Huck's protection and disguises in order to avoid getting caught by society. Together, all these characters use disguises, which are lies in physical forms, to their advantage. Huck's motive is to escape the rules of a restricting society. The King and the Duke are con men who want only to cheat society and take what isn't theirs. Jim uses disguises for survival, to escape from social prejudice and unfair punishment.
Clemens, Samuel. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter, et al. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Lexington: Heath, 1994. 236-419.
Toward the beginning of the novel, Huck has no problem robbing caravans, kidnapping wealthy people for money, and even killing the families of the gang formed by him and his friends if they became turncoats and told of this gang. He was even disappointed when all the gang did was cause trouble at a Sunday school meeting. Later on in the novel, Huck is also faced with a moral dilemma when he comes across Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave. As they travel down the river, huck mentions, “I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest” (Twain 153). Back in that time, it most certainly would not be a moral dilemma; instead, it would be very simple: bring the slave back to his owner. However, when Jim asked Huck to promise that he wouldn’t tell, Huck replied with, “Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Ablitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell” (Twain 103). In the chosen passage, it is very clear that Huck realizes what is happening there, and believes it to be wrong. Huck thinks to himself, “this is another one that I’m letting him rob her of her money. And when she got through, they all just laid
For example, Tom 's tendency to treat people as a means to provide entertainment for himself is an example of the commodification in Huck Finn, and the manner in which Huck grows to question Tom 's authority represents Huck 's acknowledgment that people should not be used carelessly. Perhaps the greatest example of commodification, however, can be seen in The Duke and the King who truly represent the capitalist ideology. Huck describes them as conmen, and soon after being introduced learns he 's not far off. The Duke and the King successfully rip of towns with false advertising and fake shows, all in the name of acquiring wealth and popularity. Twain appears to criticize their behavior, however, as well as their values through the eyes of Huck. For example, Huck notes that "they ain 't agoing to leave till they 've played this family and this town for all they 're worth" (Twain 188). Huck consequently plots to try and fix some of the wrong the Duke and the King did by stealing back the money they took and returning it to the rightful owners. The way Huck opposes the capitalistic tendencies in the Duke and the King shows Twain 's desire to break free from society 's impersonal and greedy
“In this novel, Twain uses Huck as a relatively naïve narrator to make ironic observations about Southern culture and human nature in general” (“Mark Twain” Novels 1:16). Twain uses Huck as the first-person narrator in his novel. Twain presents his topics using “the colloquial, philosophical, self-deprecating, stubbornly boyish, provincial, sensitive, but always tough and realistic voice of Huckleberry Finn” (Bloom 10). Adults and children see things from a different perspective, and Huck is definitely believable as a young boy. Children are easily believed by others, and Twain appears to know this better than most. Through Huck’s words and narrative, the reader is pulled into Huck’s feelings. Huck’s conflicts become the reader’s conflicts, and Huck’s way of solving his conflicts is not only believable but is agreeable to the reader as well. Wit...
Huck Finn is the main character of Twain’s book. He is portrayed as thoughtful and willing to come to his own conclusions in important situations.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is an immensely realistic novel, revealing how a child's morals and actions clash with those of the society around him. Twain shows realism in almost every aspect of his writing; the description of the setting, that of the characters, and even the way characters speak. Twain also satirizes many of the foundations of that society. Showing the hypocrisy of people involved in education, religion, and romanticism through absurd, yet very real examples. Most importantly, Twain shows the way Huckleberry's moral beliefs form amidst a time of uncertainty in his life.