The Role of External Forces on Personal Development

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In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck experiences many situations which require him to use his moral judgment. During the entire adventure, Huck is essentially in charge of the fate of Jim. Huck’s taught beliefs lead him down the wrong path in the beginning, but eventually –until Tom arrives- his newly developed morals guide him. Society believes that slaves should be treated as property, but Huck’s new beliefs tell him that Jim is a person; not property. Though Huck does not realize that his actions are more moral than those of his environment, he chooses to follow his instincts rather than to follow the rules. As shown in The Adventures of Huck Finn, as well as events of my own daily life, I believe that while external environment has a small impact on our beliefs and identities, every individual fully develops their own morals without regard to what their environment taught them.
Throughout the novel Huck struggles to follow his morals because he is afraid of abandoning the values that he had been taught by his environment. When he first travels with Jim along the river, he thinks it’s a sin to help an escaped slave because he is breaking the laws of Southern society. While thinking about his conflict he is reminded of Miss Watson. Huck asks himself, "What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean” (Twain 100)? Even though Huck feels that Jim deserves to live freely, Huck is anxious about helping him because he fears disobeying his environment’s values. Whenever Huck follows his own sense of decency, he still makes mistakes, but he knows that he is wrong.
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... she developed her own beliefs, which were nothing like those that had been taught by her environment.
Everyone forms their own identity in life. Of course there are external environmental factors like, community and family that affect development of values, but beyond the external factors that only shape us a little, there are even more important factors. Looking at the development of Huck throughout the novel, I see that everything that truly molds us is already inside. The changes that my adopted siblings made show me that our identities are up to us as individuals to form. Our external environments do impact our beliefs and values as we start out in life, but everyone is capable of forming an identity that is all their own, with little to no help from external forces.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.

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