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Similarities of religion and ethics
Huckleberry finn social criticism
The adventures of huckleberry finn and society
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“Custom alone regulates morals,” These words were written in the novel, The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France in 1928. The protagonist of the novel speaks this quote to another character in an effort to make him realize the lack of need for religion. What he means by these words is that what is determined as right and wrong is typically chosen by the society themselves and not what religion has said to be moral. Though the novel primarily focuses on the aspect of disproving religion, it is also similar to another novel by the name of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It is similar due to both of the novels protagonist, Huckleberry Finn and Arcade. At the beginning of both novels, they are naive and innocent, expecting …show more content…
the best from the worst and vice versa. However as the novels go on they both discover that what they were originally taught was wrong and they had to learn the right way for themselves. So as Arcade educates himself through reading, Huck does it be living and seeing the world in a different light. In Huckleberry Finn, Huck learns many lesson-along with the reader- that include religion, morality, and friendship. One of the lessons that Huckleberry Finn learned was friendship and the importance of loving someone for who they are and not what society deems them. The most important friendship in Huck Finn happens between Huckleberry Finn and a slave by the name of Jim. This is a friendship that helps teach huck a variety of things, such as why equality matters and what it truly means to care for another. The friendship began to take place at the beginning of the novel when Huck and Jim were on the island hiding out and huck decides to play a prank on Jim. In order to scare Jim, Huck places a dead rattlesnake on Jims blanket and soon forgets about it. When Jim then lays on his blanket he is attacked by the dead snakes mate and is bitten on his heel. Well watching Jim suffer for the next four days and nights, Huck decides, “...I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it.”(Twain 65). He makes this decision because he feels guilty for hurting Jim, and this is important because Huck was raised to see Jim as property and simply nothing else. So when Huck feels guilty for hurting Jim it shows that he had begun to actually care about what happened to Jim. It also shows that Huck acknowledges the fact that he had done something wrong by hurting Jim and it wasn't okay even if Jim was a slave in his eyes. As Huck and Jim's friendship, Huck begins to realize that Jim is not what society had led him to believe. Even though Huck believes that the repercussions for helping Jim can be horrible, he decides, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”(Twain 235). By Huck making this decision he is deciding that Jim is worth more than what they both had been told all their lives. Also it shows Huck putting Jim before himself, proving just how much that Huck truly cared for Jim. This friendship was one of the leading lessons that Huck-and the reader- learned. The lesson being that it doesn't matter how unlikely it may be, a friendship can rise from anywhere and change the view of life for the better or worst. Another thing that stems from Hucks friendship with Jim was how he viewed the morals of those around him. Often the men who were supposed to have the best morals were often the ones with the worst. It just went to show that how a person lucks can not define how good they are as a human being. Huck sees this as he becomes closer with Jim he sees what a good man that Jim truly was, that being clear when Jim tells Huck a memory about his daughter. The memory was Jim telling his daughter to close the door and when he believes that she is ignoring him he strikes her once. However he soon realizes that his daughter is deaf and exclaims, “De Lord God Almighty fogive po’ ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long’s he live!”(Twain 173). Jim was upset over the fact that he had struck his child well she was sick even though he had not known. It shows here how good Jims character is by the amount of guilt he had for something to that nature. There are also men who Huck has seen that show the opposite of morals that Jim has displayed. Such as the men and women of Arkansas, who were displayed as lazy, rude, and uncivilized by Twain. Twain shows this by writing of the a man by the name of Boggs being killed by a Colonel Sherburn in cold blood. The towns first reaction was to take justice into their own hands, “Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched.”(Twain 161). Instead of letting the authorities handle the situation the townspeople decide to kill a man in order to make it right. These are supposed to be the people with the most morals yet they are the ones showing just how lawless and morally corrupt they all are. The people of Arkansas also lacked in more than one area according to Twain: religion.
They used it without ever actually taking into account what they were doing, only doing it because it was expected in society. However many of them did not understand religion or even actually took into account what was being preached. It shows how little knowledge they had of religion with how they attempted to help Boggs after he was shot. What they do is bring him into a shop and, “They laid him onto the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breast…”(Twain 160). The townspeople did not know how to use a bible because they didn't understand what it actually was. Even though many in the south claimed to be Christian, most did not truly understand what it meant to be one. They would go to the service and talk of how well it went as they ignored every word that was truly being preached, just like the Shepherdsons had done. “...All about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon…”(Twain 126) Even though they discussed how good the sermon was, they were still hypocritical in the fact that they had had grudge with their neighbors for longer than most of them could
remember. Though things have changed, all of the lessons in the novel can still be used for today. The topics which Twain describes in his novel are something in which I have all dealt with in present day. Being raised in a christian environment I was led to believe that god loves all, however I soon discovered this was only true if the rules were followed. For I have watched my christian family talk of having to love everyone and condemn me all in the same breath. Also discussing there upstanding morals and then later on deciding that said morals were not worth following. It goes to show that sometimes the family you were raised with does not love you more than the friendships you had made. Graham Greene once said,“Human nature is not black and white but shades of grey.” What he meant by this was that life is not always exactly how you expected it to be. Twain also conveys this message in Huck Finn by showing that even though some may claim they are religious or had morals they didn't always follow them. It also showed that sometimes a friendship you never thought was possible is one of the most valuable.
In the novel Huckleberry Finn, Huck goes through many adventures on the Mississippi River. He escapes from Pap and sails down a ways with an escaped slave named Jim. Huck goes through a moral conflict of how wrong it is to be helping Jim escape to freedom. Eventually Huck decides he will go against what society thinks and help Jim by stealing him from a farmer with the help of Tom Sawyer, a friend. In A+P the young man, Sammy, is confronted with an issue when he sees his manager expel some girls from the store he worked in simply because of their defiance to its dress code. In his rebellion against the owner, the boy decides to quit his job and make a scene to defend the rights he feels are being violated. In these stories, both the boys are considered superior to the authority that they are defying because of the courage that it took for Huck to free Jim, and for Sammy to quit his job for the girls because it was what they believed in.
It always maintained that taking someone’s God given right of freedom was against the church preaching’s and beliefs. In addition, some of the first emigrants to the newly discovered land (North America) were slaves themselves and they were white. One of the main reasons they immigrated to North America was to escape religious persecution. The political situation did not help either; too much support to antislavery and the church could lose the much needed support of wealthy churchgoers. The institution stopped short of actively going against the problem of slavery, instead they focused their efforts in making slavery more “tolerable” for slaves. After all, most of the church goers in the south were white slave owners and/or in some way or another supported slavery and the economic factors in benefitted. In the North, the Presbyterian Church had deplored the issue of black and religion; they were never unable or unwilling to tackle the problem from its source. In the North the free blacks had more religious freedom and were allowed to participate in churches or form their own congregations. There was another phenomenon that affected the lives of slaves in the plantations. Most owners controlled all aspects of their slaves to include religion. The owners used the Gospel as a social control method to tell the slaves why they had to obey their masters (according to God) and inculcate and foster the belief of having to serve and be faithful to their
Ernest Hemmingway once described a novel by Mark Twain as, “…it is the ‘one book’ from which ‘all modern American literature’ came from” (Railton). This story of fiction, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a remarkable story about a young boy growing up in a society that influences and pressures people into doing the so-called “right thing.” It is not very difficult to witness the parallels between the society Huck has grown up in and the society that influences the choices of people living today. However, what is it that gives society the power to draw guidelines to define the norms, trends, and what is morally right and wrong in life? Is it always the best choice to listen to your consciences, which is under the influence of society, or is it sometimes just as important to listen to your heart and what you think is right?
"You cannot legislate morality" (Goldwater). Since the beginnings of civilization, the debate between legality versus morality has been highlighted. What is considered legal does not always coincide with people's moral values. Likewise, others argue that one set of morals cannot lay the law of the land. This fierce debate is a prominent theme found within two of America's most acclaimed novels, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. In both novels, the characters are seen as crooked convicts and fugitives in the eyes of the law alone; however, the readers come to love and root for these same characters throughout the novels because of the author's portrayal of their sense of morality leading them to break unjust laws. Furthermore, not only is this take on the strength of morality over legality found within the novels, but also within modern articles that criticize the immorality of the government throughout history. Consequently,
There are many writers that convey their purposes using different methods. Many writers use different techniques to persuade their audience towards a specific idea in their writing. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain tells the story about a boy named Huck, who takes on many adventures along with Jim, a runaway slave. Throughout their journey, Huck starts to realize that African Americans are much the same as white Americans. He sees that the treatments of African Americans is wrong and cruel. Huck’s view on African Americans changes through the course of the novel because Twain introduces his idea of racism being immoral through the different uses of techniques. Writers like Walt Whitman, Brent Staples, Langston
In the two of the most revered pieces of American literature, “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, we examined two characters and the relationships that they shared with their fathers. Being a father and having a father-like figure plays a monumental role in a child’s life. Although in these components of literature, the two main characters, Huckleberry Finn and Colonel Sartoris Snopes, show animosity towards their fathers. They both aspired to be the farthest type of person from their fathers. Huckleberry Finn didn’t want to be a drunk, ignorant, racist. Although at the beginning of the short story, Sarty backed his father and lied for him when accused of burning barns, but at the end of
Mark Twain’s purpose in “Corn-Pone Opinions” is to inform the reader that it is human nature to conform to the rest of society. According to Twain,”self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is conformity.” (Twain 720). While humans provide opinions, many of them are based from the association with others. Twain claims that it is a basic human instinct to receive approval, mostly that of others. In his essay, Furthermore, Twain is attempting to persuade the reader to stop conforming to what society wants. It is through this process that many individuals abandon their own beliefs and principles.
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
Mark Twain writes this essay in order to shed light onto his belief that people’s thoughts and actions are influenced by those around them. His belief that people conform to the rest of society fuels his essay. This can be seen when Twain includes his idea that “It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist” (718). Twain shows that people are beginning to conform without using their own minds to process their decision.
“Things like morals, religion, and politics, get their following from surrounding influences and atmospheres.” (pg. 4) Twain says this to show that anything you can possibly think of, even things commonly found in everyday life stemmed from some sort of opinion. Furthermore, he asserts that self-approval is achieved mainly through public approval, which is the definition of conformity. Paragraph seven states that political emergencies create the greatest example of conformity because being in the majority means that you’ll never be in the wrong. So to speak, no one will judge you for a difference of opinion because most people agree with yours. Once again Twain uses an example that appeals to logos, and can be applied to everyday life. Paragraph eight continues the issue of politics by saying men think with their parties, not their brains. No one will seek out the opposite argument because that isn’t what their party believes, therefore it doesn’t
In today's society each one of us have our very own responsibilities and moralities. The development of responsibility comes from how well we have matured. And our sense of morality comes from our experience and knowledge. Theses two skills develop with the aid of parents or any adult, maturity teaches us about the path of understanding things in the society and it leads to the decision to choose from right or wrong. The events of Lord of flies can be easily compared to those in the book The adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In these two books , it deals with the two main characters who are not old enough to hold such responsibilities. Therefore, in both books a change in society enabled the characters to experience and develop important life values. The characters of the story are lead to freedom but learn about the huge responsibility they have which is taking care of themselves and others around them. They are able to distinguish from good and bad. Self taught sense of moral responsibility. Throughout the book the characters contends with the influence of society's values and in the end makes a decision.
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Conformity and the causation thereof is a common theme Mark Twain uses in his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Throughout the story the main character, Huck, enters different settings in which he is either taught how to think or left to his own devices to come to his own conclusions. He struggles to identify with the morals presented to him by society and as a result, cannot determine whether he should follow his own moralities. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain utilizes the characterization of Huck in and out of nature to demonstrate the psychological effects of nature versus nurture
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a classic novel about a young boy who struggles to save and free himself from captivity, responsibility, and social injustice. Along his river to freedom, he aids and befriends a runaway slave named Jim. The two travel down the Mississippi, hoping to reach Cairo successfully. However, along the way they run into many obstacles that interrupt their journey. By solving these difficult tasks, they learn life lessons important to survival.
Huck Finn, a narcissistic and unreliable young boy, slowly morphs into a courteous figure of respect and selflessness. After Pap abducts the young and civilized Huck, Huck descends into his old habits of lies and half-truths. However, upon helping a runaway slave escape, Huck regains morality and a sense of purpose. Throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck lies to characters, casting the authenticity of the story into doubt but illustrating Huck’s gradual rejection of lying for himself and a shift towards lying for others.