Journey to Independence in Huckleberry Finn
In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character, Huck, struggles to develop his own set of beliefs and values despite the very powerful social structure of his environment. The people he encounters and the situations he experiences while traveling down the Mississippi River help him become an independent thinker in the very conformist society of 19th century Missouri.
Huck is a free spirit who finds socially acceptable actions to be restrictive and unbearable. This is demonstrated after Huck and his best friend Tom Sawyer find a large amount of money. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck. With Widow Douglas, Huck feels as though society's values and norms are being shoved down his throat. "The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; 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." (Twain 3) As Huck and Tom's adventure down the river begins, they have to quickly adapt to life on a raft. Both Huck and Tom prove themselves capable of this task. "My bed was a straw tick-better than Jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt" (Twain 123) Resourceful Huck made beds for both he and Jim on the raft. No longer does he have the bed at Widow Douglas's house or even his sugar-hogshead, but he still survived with what he had.
Early on in the journey, the reader can see the fondness that Huck has for mankind. "And begged me to save their ...
... middle of paper ...
..., but didn't seem enthralled by it. He agreed to go along with his gang. By the end of the novel Huck has matured and is able to make independent decisions, even when they clash with others. "I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say-so it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor." (Twain 264) This passage displays the newfound wisdom of Huckleberry Finn. Hucks leaving for the doctor against Tom's will is the first time Huck asserts himself in doing what he believes is right.
Huckleberry Finn's travels down the Mississippi brought events and people into his life that clarified his own beliefs and values. Huck always lived an independent lifestyle. By learning to make decisions for himself and assert his own beliefs, he could now be considered an independent thinking individual in a conformist society.
“Make the best o’ things the way you find ‘em, says I-that’s my motto. This ain’t no bad thing that we’ve struck here-plenty grub and an easy life-come, give us your hand, duke, and let’s all be friends” (Twain 124). Although this excerpt was taken from a con man in the story, it is an important quotation that is not to be overlooked. Twain wrote characters that have all faced oppression, such as Huck growing up with a complicated family life, or Jim who isn’t even treated as a human. But they all overcame their adversity, had remarkable attitudes, and found their personal freedom within the raft. Huck has had a childhood that has been anything but ordinary. He starts out in the home of the Widow Douglas and her sister who both try to civilize
Throughout Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck learns a variety of life lessons and improves as a person. Huck goes through a maturing process much different than most, he betters a conscience and begins to feel for humanity versus society. His trip down the river can be seen as a passage into manhood, where his character changes as he can relate with the river and nature.
Huck has been raised in a high-class society where rules and morals are taught and enforced. He lives a very strict and proper life where honesty and adequacy is imposed. Huck being young minded and immature, often goes against these standards set for him, but are still very much a part of his decision-making ability and conscience. When faced to make a decision, Hucks head constantly runs through the morals he was taught. One of the major decisions Huck is faced with is keeping his word to Jim and accepting that Jim is a runaway. The society part of Hucks head automatically looks down upon it. Because Huck is shocked and surprised that Jim is a runaway and he is in his presence, reveals Hucks prejudice attitude that society has imposed on him. Huck is worried about what people will think of him and how society would react if they heard that Huck helped save a runaway slave. The unspoken rules th...
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.
Huckleberry Finn – The Changes of His Character Throughout the Novel. & nbsp; 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 from a different perspective now. & nbsp; At the beginning of the novel, Huck tends to have an immature side to him. There are some things in the beginning that show that Huck still has a very childish side to him. They get down on one thing when they don't know anything about it."
After Huck asks Tom why he tried to free a free slave, and Tom told him about how they’d become heroes and what not, Tom says to himself, “But I reckened it was about as well the way it was”(pg.291). Here, we see that Huck has really become dormant in his own thinking, and seeks to know what others like Tom think. Interestingly, by the end of the novel he has become somewhat submissive and willing to listen to what he is told to do, but still with an overall heightened sense of morality that developed throughout his adventures.
Huckleberry Finn, “Huck”, over the course of the novel, was faced with many obstacles that went into creating his moral compass. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins with Huck, a 12 year old boy heavily swayed by society and by Tom Sawyer, a fellow orphan. His opinions and depiction of right and wrong were so swindled to fit into society’s mold. Throughout the story Huck Finn’s moral compass undergoes a complete transformation in search of a new purpose in life. Huck was raised with very little guidance from an alcoholic father, of no mentorship. He was forced to live with Widow Douglas and with Miss Watson’s hypocritical values. Upon learning of God and Heaven from Widow Douglas, he remarks that he is unable to see the benefits of going
Set in pre-civil war America, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes place along the Mississippi river. As Huckleberry travels along it he learns lessons about life, society and most importantly; himself. Surrounded by a world of prejudice and racism, Huck is forced to learn to make decisions on his own. He is able to learn from the imperfections in the rest of the world as he views them. While on the river, Huck and Jim are at peace. The river symbolizes freedom for both Jim and Huck. The river is Jim’s path to freedom from slavery, and it is Huck’s freedom from society. When Jim and Huck journey onto the banks of the river they see the inhumanity to man that goes on in the world. This juxtaposition of the river and the land help emphasize the peacefulness of the river in comparison to the crazy society on land. Huck learns to think for himself, and tries not to conform to the ways of the people on the land. Although the world that he lives in teaches him to be a racist, his journey down the river teaches him to use his own mind, and find out what he really believes in.
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...
to reach he would have to do it legally, and so he decided to stand
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...
It is clear from the beginning of the play that Macbeth is a brave war
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...
Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne...Oh no! It's a...long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting." -Albert Camus. The dictionary defines freedom as the condition of being free from restraints. Freedom is not just a word one can say without meaning. It is a privilege, a privilege not everyone is granted. Freedom gives the liberty to choose what should is done and how.
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.