Transcendentalism is about connecting with nature. Mark Twain influences these aspects of transcendentalism with his masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. However in today's society students and teachers view the novel as being obscene. Which is because society is ruling their lives. Their view The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain as a racist novel but they miss the transcendental aspects of it such as the society of the time, Huck’s beliefs and Huck’s actions.
Much like how society influences views on the novel, society influences huck throughout the novel. The timezone of the book is before the American Civil War. The way of life was based on slaves in the south, and the start of Industrial Revolution in the north. The country had just started to split between free slave states and slave states. The class system much like today was based off of material possessions. It went rich, middle class, poor working class, poor white trash, and slaves . Huck’s father was in the poor white trash area. Who was racist against the african americans because they were going to pass him in social class. Such as “ ‘I ain’t never in my life been beholding to no nigger’ says finn” (Clinch 37). As far as Pap was concerned the african americans had no right to take the power he had away. Here is the world Huck lives in. He has influences from his father, and from his adopted parents Miss Watson and Widow Douglas. Huck was satisfied with what he has, and does not want to reform the way Miss Watson and Widow Douglas wants him to. They want Huck to be proper and have a high society life. As well as to be proper was to be well educated and have fancy material possessions. “ I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead ag...
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...eals and thoughts that were ahead of his time. Huckleberry finn as a whole can teach today’s that society is good, but don't let it rule our live. Not to be influenced so much by society that you can not think for yourself which in today’s society has lost. Also that you don't need material items to be happy, happiness is what you make of it and can not be bought. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a true example of Transcendentalism.
Works Cited
Jon Clinch, Finn, Randon house Nae network
Twain Mark, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Perfection Form Company, 1979 Print
Brian Braiter, “Latest word from Huck Finn” www.abcnews.go.com/us/latest-word-huckfinn/story, Nightime line Jan 4,2011
Fishskinn Shelly “Take the new word out of ‘Huck Finn’ its an insult to Mark Twain and to American history, www.Nydailynews.com, Wednesday Jan 5, 2011
In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn you meet a rebellious young teen named Huck Finn. Huck is not your everyday hero especially in the beginning of the novel but slowly through the story his mature, responsible side comes out and he shows that he truly is the epitome of a hero. Huck is forced to make many crucial decisions, which could get him in serious trouble if not get him killed. Huck has natural intelligence, has street smarts, which are helpful along his adventure, and is assertive. Huck has always had to rely on himself to get through things because he is from the lowest levels of white society and his dad is known more or less as the `town drunk." So when Huck fakes his death and runs away to live on an island he is faced with yet another problem, which revolves around the controversial issue of the time of racism.
The Adventure’s of Huckleberry Finn’s unique ability to incorporate moral lessons through satire and simmilar literary techniques prove it to be vital for High school students, especially at Rye, to read. The vast nature of things it teaches is something very rare for one book to do. It not only provides the reader with important life themes like other great novels do but it also shocks the reader to show the power of racism which makes it one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time. Just think of how different things would be if no one had read such an important book.
	In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops criticism of society by contrasting Huck and Jim’s life on the river to their dealings with people on land. Twain uses the adventures of Huck and Jim to expose the hypocrisy, racism, and injustices of society.
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.
In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, the main conflict that comes up is that of the issue of slavery. The society in this novel does not even consider slavery to be wrong, while Huck Finn continues to shun slavery more and more, as the book unfolds. This very belief Huck Finn beholds is evident, with his ever growing friendship with Jim, a slave in the novel. While society sees Jim as property, Huck can discriminate, and sees past the societal ploy for ethical mistreat on another human being, more specifically on an entire race. In this same novel, other societal expectation are present, and noticeable. This is evident through Huck's education. Society expects him to be educated, while Huck resents this all the while (Twain 20,21). In this expectation of Huck by society, there can be found no wrong.
Transcendentalism to some is may just be a long, lengthy word coined two hundred years ago that is not used today, but to other people, people like Chris McCandless, it is a way of life. They use these qualities to shape their life and strive hard to follow them. Chris McCandless was so focused on embodying the qualities of transcendentalism that he failed to see how much danger he was putting himself in. He had little to no common sense as shown by Westerberg. “But there were gaps in his thinking. I remember once I went over to the house, walked into the kitchen, and noticed a god-awful stink. I mean it smelled nasty in there. I opened the microwave, and the bottom of it was filled with rancid grease. Alex had been using it to cook chicken, and it never occurred to him that the grease had to drain somewhere. It wasn’t that he was too lazy to clean it up- Alex always kept things real neat and orderly- it was just that he hadn’t noticed the grease” (Krakauer 45). McCandless embodied the values of transcendentalism by believing in living closer to nature, believing in the dignity of manual labor, and being self reliant.
Transcendentalist writing had to do with the human sprit and its connection to nature. Transcendentalist thinkers believed that all things that occurred in nature were supposed to happen. For example, if there were forest fire that happened naturally, it would be looked at as a good thing because the ground gets nutrients. An anti-transcendentalist would see forest-fires as an act of destruction.
Are humans naturally good, or evil? Many people argue both ways. It has been argued for centuries, and many authors have written about it. One example of this is Samuel Clemens's, more commonly known as Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book follows a young boy, named Huckleberry, and a runaway slave, named Jim, as they both run away. Huck runs away to escape being civilized, while Jim runs away from slavery. Together, they talk about life, philosophy, and friends. As they travel down the Mississippi River, both Huck and Jim learn various life lessons. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck witnesses the depravity of human nature on his journey on the Mississippi River.
Huck Finn learns from the actions of people around him, what kind of a person he is going to be. He is both part of the society and an outlier of society, and as such he is given the opportunity to make his own decisions about what is right and what is wrong. There are two main groups of characters that help Huck on his journey to moral maturation. The first group consists of Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and the judge. They portray society and strict adherence to rules laid out by authority. The second group consists of Pap, the King, and the Duke. They represent outliers of society who have chosen to alienate themselves from civilized life and follow no rules. While these characters all extremely important in Huck’s moral development, perhaps the most significant character is Jim, who is both a fatherly figure to Huck as well as his parallel as far as limited power and desire to escape. Even though by the end of the novel, Huck still does not want to be a part of society, he has made a many choices for himself concerning morality. Because Huck is allowed to live a civilized life with the Widow Douglas, he is not alienated like his father, who effectively hates civilization because he cannot be a part of it. He is not treated like a total outsider and does not feel ignorant or left behind. On the other hand, because he does not start out being a true member of the society, he is able to think for himself and dismiss the rules authority figures say are correct. By the end of the novel, Huck is no longer a slave to the rules of authority, nor is he an ignorant outsider who looks out only for himself. This shows Huck’s moral and psychological development, rendering the description of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as a picaresq...
Initially starting as a religious and philosophical reform movement in the Unitarian church, Transcendentalism is the philosophy emphasizing individualistic spiritual intuition transcending empirical thinking and material based scientific knowledge utilized to comprehend and interpret reality and the connection between the world, the universe, and the individual. Since Transcendentalist acknowledge that humans are inherently born morally and ethically unbiased, they believe that society and its established institutions corrupt the untainted individual. The social and religious conformities of the society imposed on Huck Finn is shown through The Widows and Miss Watson’s adopting of Huck as an attempt to civilize and cleanse him, “The Widow
In the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck rejects "sivilized" life. He dreads the rules and conformities of society such as religion, school, and anything else that will eventually make him civilized. He feels cramped in his new surroundings at the Widow Douglas's house. He would rather be in his old rags and sugar-hogshead because he was free and satisfied. He felt out of place when he tried being "sivilized" because he grew up fending for himself and to him it felt really lonely. Huck Finn grew up living in the woods and pretty much raised himself because his pap was a drunk. He never had a civilized lifestyle and he believed that his way of living was good enough for him. He was free to do what ever he liked and that is how he learned to live. He did not believe in school because all you need to know to live is not found in a book that you read at school. He believed that you learned by living out in the wild. Huck would rather be an individual than conform to society. Huck would rather follow his heart then his head and because of this Huck is ruled as a bad person because in society your suppose to use your head. Huck is being penalized for his beliefs and he does not want to be apart of a lifestyle that does not support his ways. For instance his choice not to turn in Jim shows that Huck understands why Jim is escaping. Huck sees Jim as a friend not as a slave and so he truly is able to see that society's way of treaty Jim is wrong. Huck is portrayed as a boy who sees life at face value and not by the set "standards" of the "sivilized" society. The rejection of the "sivilized" lifestyles shows that Huck does not agree with it rules. Because of this, he is able to see life from different perspectives. He can sympathize with all the class in society. He learns to figure out what is morally correct and wrong. Through out his journey down the river, Huck is able to learn more about himself and others.
Mark Twain’s masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through much criticism and denunciation has become a well-respected novel. Through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy, Huckleberry Finn, Twain illustrates the controversy of racism and slavery during the aftermath of the Civil War. Since Huck is an adolescent, he is vulnerable and greatly influenced by the adults he meets during his coming of age. His expedition down the Mississippi steers him into the lives of a diverse group of inhabitants who have conflicting morals. Though he lacks valid morals, Huck demonstrates the potential of humanity as a pensive, sensitive individual rather than conforming to a repressive society. In these modes, the novel places Jim and Huck on pedestals where their views on morality, learning, and society are compared.
Transcendentalism was a movement that began in the 1830s through the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. It has to do with self reliance, nature and the connection between man, God, and nature. It tells you to listen to oneself and go by one's own choices instead of what society tells one to do. It shows the beauty in nature and all of what can come out of it. People today often don't think that way anymore and have argued that Transcendentalism has died out over the years. However, one may need to take into account modern conception of individuality and the beauty of nature. Transcendentalism has not died out and is still thriving in American culture through music of Twisted Sisters, Nirvana, kendrick Lamar, and The Beatles
At the beginning of the tale, Huck struggles between becoming ?sivilized? and doing what he pleases. He doesn?t want to listen to the rules that the Widow Douglas and her sister force upon him, even though he knows the widow only wants what is best for him. Miss Watson pushes Huck away from society even more through the way she treats him. She teaches him religion in such a dreary way that when she speaks of heaven and hell, Huck would rather go to hell than be in heaven with her: ?And she told all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there?I couldn?t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn?t try for it? (12-13). Huck is taught a very different kind of morality by his father who believes ?it warn?t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back?? (70). He likes his father?s idea of morality better because he is not yet mature enough to fully understand right and wrong, although living with the widow...
On February 10, in chapter nine and ten, Huck and Jim have developed somewhat of a friendship. They hide the canoe in a cavern; just in a case there were visitors that had dropped by. Unfortunately, it rains very hard, and the two hide in the cavern. The two find a washed-out houseboat, they find a dead body in the house, the body had been shot in the back. While heading back to the cave, Huck has Jim hide in the canoe, so he would not be seen. The next day, Huck puts a dead rattlesnake near Jim's sleeping place, and its mate comes and bites Jim. Jim's leg swells. A while later, Huck decides to go ashore and to find out what's new. Jim agrees, but has Huck disguise himself as a girl, with one of the dresses they took from the houseboat. Huck practices his girl impersonation, and then sets out for the Illinois shore. In an abandoned shack, he finds a woman who looks forty, and also appears a newcomer. Huck is relieved she is a newcomer, since she will not be able to recognize him. The two characters share a few important traits in common. One of the most obvious similarities is their confidence in superstition, though superstition was also a part of the society in which they lived, where people thought cannon balls and loaves of bread with mercury could find drowned corpses. The two are from “civilization” and more generally the white upper class world. Of course, Jim’s background is much deeper than Huck's. As an African American, he simply is less a part of it. Jim's freedom is endangered by that world; he must hide himself during the day so that he is not taken back to it. Journal Entry 6