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Racism in mark twain books
Adventure of huckleberry finn chapter 10-12 morality
Adventure of huckleberry finn chapter 10-12 morality
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Why did Huck decide to hide the money from the King and Duke? The novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written by Mark Twain and was published in 1884. In the novel, the main character Huckleberry Finn, runs away and is joined by his friend Jim. One night while the two are on a raft floating down a river, two strangers ask to jump on because they are being chased after. These two older men try to convince Huck and Jim that they are royalty and so the boys start referring to them as the King and the Duke. The four of them share a raft and float down a river and make frequent stops at the towns they come across. Once they get to these town the King and the Duke find ways to defraud people to get money. They stop at a town and the King pretends to be the brother of a man that had just died in an attempt to inherit money. Huck overhears the King and the Duke develop a plan to steal $6,000 and skip town before they get caught, …show more content…
Huck has been following the orders of whatever the King and Duke have told him to do and he has never gone against their wishes, so why did he this time? In chapter twenty-six, Huck gets into an argument with one of the family members about England. One by one, other family members come to Huck’s defense. After they stand up for him Huck thinks “I says to myself, this is another one that I’m letting him rob her of her money… I felt so ornery and low down and mean, that I says to myself, My mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust” (Twain 211). The longer Huck stays with this family the more he believes that stealing money from them is wrong. Ever since the King and the Duke showed up, Huck has been doing whatever they tell him to, including scheme with them. This family has shows a lot of kindness to Huck even though he is just a stranger, and he begins to realize that stealing from them is
When Huck and Jim sink the boat they start to gather some valuables on the robbers boat. They noticed that everything that are taking is just almost everyday materials such as clothes, cigars, and a bunch of books. Huck and Jim bring their raft to the shore and stop and sleep in the woods for the night. When they were just sitting their Huck opened up one of the books and started to read it. As he was reading it, he thought of Widow Douglass and how she would be proud of Huck for reading. While reading the book, Huck also realizes a name in the book the name is Dauphin, and was told that he is out in America wandering around. But Jim just sits back and doesn’t believe what Huck is saying at all.
Along the river, Jim and Huck run across two scam artists who claim to be a runaway King and Duke. Their raft is overtaken by these two men who force Huck and Jim into their dangerous, yet comical scams. Their last scam proves t be too much of Huck. The King and Duke claim to be the brothers of a quite wealth, but conveniently deceased man. Because of their acclamation, the two men are guaranteed a large inheritance. However, when Huck falls for the beautiful heart and kindness of one of the dead man's nieces he can't imagine stealing the money form her. Huck tells the niece the whole story, and admits who the "brothers" really are. The King and Duke are eventually discovered by the town to be impersonators, and are tarred and feathered.
Huck would try and be a rebel because he had no male to tell him right from wrong. If Huck needed help, the only real person that he could talk to would be Tom Sawyer, a very good friend, also a thief, a rebel, and he lived on his own. Tom was not that great of a role model, for a young boy like Huck. His father was always away, and never there for him, and when he was around he was always drunk. It is hard enough to talk to a drunk man, let alone when you have a problem and need advice.
When the middle of the novel comes around Huck begins to distinguish what is right and wrong in life and begins to mature and do the right thing. He shows this when he chooses not to partake in the scam that the King and the Duke are playing on the Wilks family. Instead he takes the money back from the King and Duke to hide it because he believes it is only fair to the family. "I'm letting him rob her of her money...I feel so ornery and low...I got to steal that money somehow; and I got to steal it some way that they wont suspicion I done it" (Twain 133) This shows that Huck is starting to see the line between games and real life.
This is shown through his many experiences with the Duke and the King, the Peter Wilk scam, and Jim. Huck displays his kindness when he picks up two strangers and lets them travel with him and Jim. Here comes a couple of men tearing up the path. They begged me to save their lives and wanted to jump right in. I. says:.Wade down to me and get in."
Huck places very little value on the large sum of money that he has in the bank, while he finds smaller sums more important. Six thousand dollars was a fortune in the time that the book was written, but Huck, unlike the rest of his society wasn't impressed by it. This is again because of his literal mindedness. What could he use six thousand dollars for? He could use ten cents to buy some food, or five cents to buy some fishing line, but he had no use for huge sums of money. Society put value on wealth and property and book learning.
He started to feel guilty for keeping Jim hidden all that time and even attempted to write Mrs. Watson. He wrote a letter to her telling of Jim’s location but ripped it up immediately after. Huck came to a conclusion when he says, “I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all” (Twain 204). He knew that what he was doing was not considered right in that situation but he felt okay with the choices that he had made. At this point, the reader can see how Huck is conflicted and acknowledges that his lies could have been immoral. In the end of his meltdown, he decided that it was all for the best and he wanted to continue to protect Jim at all
Huck Finn, the main character of Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, travels down the Mississippi River in search of personal truth and freedom, which ironically he achieves by living a lie. Huck's journey causes him to wear a variety of disguises and masks to survive. Unfortunately however, the people he meets along the way wear disguises which they use to deceive and cheat the same society that Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, are trying to escape from. Jim must use his own cleverness, Huck's protection and disguises in order to avoid getting caught by society. Together, all these characters use disguises, which are lies in physical forms, to their advantage. Huck's motive is to escape the rules of a restricting society. The King and the Duke are con men who want only to cheat society and take what isn't theirs. Jim uses disguises for survival, to escape from social prejudice and unfair punishment.
As a result, Huck's values towards education are uncertain. Pap Finn, as a figure of the lower class, does his part to confuse the growing morals of his son. Together with Pap, the King and the Duke do their share to put moral ideas into the immature mind of Huck. The King and the Duke earn their living pulling scams on their fellow Americans. For instance, they advertised the "Royal Nonesuch" as a "thrilling tragedy" and charged the farmers in the area fifty cents to come and see it (121).
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...
Toward the beginning of the novel, Huck has no problem robbing caravans, kidnapping wealthy people for money, and even killing the families of the gang formed by him and his friends if they became turncoats and told of this gang. He was even disappointed when all the gang did was cause trouble at a Sunday school meeting. Later on in the novel, Huck is also faced with a moral dilemma when he comes across Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave. As they travel down the river, huck mentions, “I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest” (Twain 153). Back in that time, it most certainly would not be a moral dilemma; instead, it would be very simple: bring the slave back to his owner. However, when Jim asked Huck to promise that he wouldn’t tell, Huck replied with, “Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Ablitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell” (Twain 103). In the chosen passage, it is very clear that Huck realizes what is happening there, and believes it to be wrong. Huck thinks to himself, “this is another one that I’m letting him rob her of her money. And when she got through, they all just laid
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. While living on the island he meets Jim, who was a slave, but Huck soon learns that he has run off and now in the process of making his way up north to Canada. Here Huck is faced with his first tough decision, to go with Jim and help him, or just go and tell the officials of a runaway slave and get the reward. Huck reluctantly joins Jim and promises to get him to free land for the sake of a good adventure, but he still feels guilty to be conversing with a runaway slave, let alone help him escape. Along the way Huck has many challenges, which are just like this one.
From the very beginning of the novel, there is an air of phoniness to the environments Huck is raised in, and his upbringing is the foundation for his ability to observe others’ discrepancies. He dislikes the stuffy rules in Widow Douglas’s home because they make little reasonable sense to him - for instance, Widow Douglas will not let him smoke because it is “a mean practice” and not “clean,” yet she chews tobacco, which Huck scoffs is alright because “she did it herself” (12). Huck observes little duplicities like this, yet does not judge them outright. And as uncomfortable as he was with the uptight style of living with Widow Douglas, he also finds little solace in the woods with his abusive father.... ...
Upon first joining Huck and Jim on the raft, the younger of the two con-men promptly declares himself to be the Duke of Bridgewater. Jealous of the Duke’s preferential treatment, and royal position, the King begins to mock him by calling him the Duke of “Bilgewater” (Twain, 145). When the King calls the Duke “Bilgewater”, he shows that he doesn’t respect the Duke and his (albeit fraudulent) identity. In his contempt towards the Duke, his disdain for the Duke’s title disparages the Duke’s personhood. Later, following the failure of their Romeo and Juliet show, the King and the Duke are eager to make some money, and decide to put on a low comedy show titled Royal Nonesuch.