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Impact of poor parenting
Though women are seemingly not a large role in Huck Finn, Twain uses women to show the unfair gender roles they were forced to follow by providing the...
Impact of poor parenting
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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. To begin with, the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson are two wealthy sisters who adopt Huck. Thw two sister’s want to teach Huck the importance of religion, manners, and behaving. After staying in the house for a while, Huck realizes that “it [is] rough living in the house all the time”, because the Widow Douglas wants to “sivilize [him]”(Twain, 1). When dinner is ready the widow would call Huck to the table, but before they began eating the widow needs “to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals” (1). Huck knew there was nothing was wrong with the food but because the widow was religious she was trying to instill in Huck that he needs to bless his food and give thanks to God for it. The widow is trying to make religion a part of Huck’s life, which seems to be a negative impact on his life considering the many times Twain portrays religious persons as being gullible. Miss Watson, the more forceful of the two sisters, is adamant about getting huck to behave. To help mold Huck into a person that “go[es] to the good place” also known as heaven, Miss Watson constantly tells him things to do to help him behave such as “don’t put your feet up there” and “set up straight”(2). Besides adopting a religion, and behaving, Hucks appearance needed to be neat and respectable. Although the new clothes made Huck “sweat and sweat,... ... middle of paper ... ...who has ever “kep’ his promise to ole Jim” (80). Another character quality that Huck learns from Jim is that African-Americans are people too that can feel the same about their family as Caucassians feel about theirs. Huck often hears Jim moaning in the night about being homesick and missing his family. This is when Huck understands that just because Jim is African-American does not mean that they are incapable of having the same feelings as Caucassians. In general Jim affects Huck positively because now Huck is humble, trustworthy, and not as influenced by society about African-Americans. Ultimately, Huck’s personality is shaped by three adults with different guidance styles. In general Miss Watson, Widow Douglas, and Jim put in beneficial character traits to help shape Huck Finn as a person, while pap only added worthless drivel such as not going to school.
A hero puts other people before themselves and is admired for their qualities, courage, and achievements. A hero obtains knowledge throughout their journey of helping and healing. From Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huckleberry begins his journey with his first dilemma to save a slave, Jim. Huckleberry Finn begins to transform into a courageous hero when he learns the value of a human being.
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 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.
Twain uses Huck to show the readers how living under an authoritative figure causes one to conform to the ideals and beliefs created by society. He proves to the readers, that while under the care of adults, Huck is forced to follow rules and is limited in his own freedoms. However, in the setting of nature, Twain explains how Huck has more liberties and is free to live his life as he pleases, including “shameful” activities such as befriending Jim. As the story unravels, Twain emphasizes to the audience that society is the cause of one to conform and that action should be taken to permit more liberties and uniqueness within
In Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn, like most growing children, has many changes in his personality. Throughout the novel Huck constantly learns new things and, despite a few setbacks, he uses them to mature. Through this maturity, Huck becomes more caring and wise, unlike his blithe and childish personality in the beginning of the the novel. Twain characterizes Huck as any other child by telling us his path to maturity. Huck realizes who he is and what he believes.
As Marcel Proust said, “We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” Set 20 years before the Civil War, Mark Twain’s novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, depicts the adventures of a young troublemaker named Huck Finn and his companion, a runaway slave named Jim. Throughout the journey, Huck is depicted as a hero, cut from the mythical mold. At every step of his journey, he conforms to one or another of the eight elements of Campbell’s paradigm. We see this most readily in Huck’s trials and tribulations, his symbolic death and rebirth, and his special traits from birth.
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...
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became man, I put my childish ways behind me (NIC: 1Corinthians 13:11)
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain writes about Huckleberry, a young boy living during the times of slavery, who decides he would rather go to Hell than give up Jim, a runaway slave (Twain 249-50). This decision to completely desert everything he has ever known and been taught to save Jim, encapsulates Huck’s moral growth throughout the novel. Twain’s novel typifies the elements of the psychological lens based upon Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, and in doing so, demonstrates that real morality does not succumb to society’s pressure. Therefore, this novel belongs in the Western Canon.
Although Huck considered Jim a slave as the story went on he became his friend. This friendship was based on Jim being more of a father figure to Huck. Jim sees Huck as the only "white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim". While on this adventure Jim helped house Huck and keep him safe by keeping lookout and Huck slept. Jim actually cared when he thought Huck had passed by saying “It's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true," he says: "Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you".
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.
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...
As one reads the book, they start to think Huckleberry Finn has become a more compassionate, understanding person, however this is not the case. Throughout the book Huck continually belittles Jim, making him feel less than he actually is .An example of Huck’s superiority can be seen when he says, “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger;”(Twain,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a popular novel written by Mark Twain which follows the main character, Huck, in a narrative fashion. The novel can be envisaged as a bildungsroman, or coming of age story, as Huck develops his own philosophies through his experiences of various events throughout the story. The selfish and carefree attitudes, which clearly portray Huck’s adolescence and innocence at the beginning of the story, are gradually replaced by a more critical and rational adult way of thinking formed by his experiences. How did Huckleberry Finn become more mentally mature and adult-like as the story progressed? Throughout the story, Huckleberry Finn’s outlook on life changes as he grows a stronger bond with Jim and is exposed to the lies, racism, and murder that make up the morally flawed society of his time.
At first he believes that African Americans are below him and he can do what he wants with them. But over time these views begin to change he starts to believe Jim is just like him. After Jim and Huck loss each other, Huck plays a trick on Jim saying he drept the whole thing and that it never happened. Feeling horrible Huck says “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger-but I’d done it.” After playing this joke on Jim, Huck truly feels bad. This is the first time that it shows Huck truly feeling bad without Jim making him feel bad. This really shows Huck’s development has a person because he is now realizing the slaves are people not just property and he cannot just do what he wants to Jim. After Jim is sold Huck begins to realize his love for Jim. He says this “I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.” This is the most important quote in the book with Huck’s moral development. He finally realizes all the things he and Jim have done for each other. He decides that he loves Jim and he would do what is right for Jim even if it means he goes to hell because of it. Throughout the book Jim changes Huck Finn for the better. Morally he learns that slaves are people not just property and through time he realizes he loves Jim and wants to friends with him