Huck Finn Essays (1366 words) - English-language Films,

Huck Finn Throughout the ages The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been a treasured novel to people of all ages. For young adults the pure adventuresome properties of the book captivates and inspires wild journeys into the unknown. The book appeals to them only as a quest filled with danger and narrow escapes. It is widely considered that children of 12 or so are a little too young to absorb the books complexities (Galileo: Morrow). However, as readers mature and become older, they read the book through enlightened eyes. They begin to understand the trials and moral struggles that this young boy undergoes in resisting society, struggles that no adult would relish. This paper delves into how Huck Finn rejects the accepted moral values and social mores of his society. Hucks independence and freethinking are marvels in a conformists culture. By itself, the fact that Huck stands up for something against the then-contemporary beliefs is no significant event. The remarkable feat is that he stands up for something that he does not believe. This is a fact seldom considered by our heroic notions of Huck, because in this day and time slavery and dehumanization are abhorred by almost every ethnicity and religion. Now people attempt to conceptualize what a tragedy and terror it was for slaves. The picture is not pretty. Twain helps us with that visualization. Huckleberry Finn is known as a fairly accurate depiction of what life was like in the south. In a comparison with Tom Sawyer, Lionel Trilling says, The truth of Huckleberry Finn is of a different kind from that of Tom Sawyer. It is a more intense truth, fiercer and more complex. Tom Sawyer has the truth of honestywhat it says about things and feelings [are] never false and always both adequate and beautiful. Huckleberry Finn has this kind of truth, too, but it has also the truth of moral passion; it deals directly with the virtue and depravity of mans heart. (258) This assertion tells the reader that most, in that time period, did have the same views, reactions, and ethics as offered in the book. Huck is in direct opposition and retaliation with almost all of these tenets. He first demonstrates this by wishing to leave the Widow Douglas because she wants to sivilize him. The interesting observation is, the irony of the Widows attempt to teach Huck religious principles while she persists in holding slaves. As with her snuff takingwhich was all right because she did it herselfthere seems no relationship between a fundamental sense of humanity and justice and her religion. Hucks practical morality makes him more Christian than the Widow, though he takes no interest in her lifeless principles. (Grant 1013) Huck seems to have the inclination that something is wrong with her beliefs in God and how people should follow Him, unfortunately he couldnt see no advantage in going where she was going, so [he] made up [his] mind [he] wouldnt try for it (Twain 13). Huck could not endure these rigors of formal southern training and finally he couldnt stand it no longer. [He] lit out (Twain 13). Huck never did quite feel right in society, in his hometown or in any of the towns he visited during his daring journey. Only when he was in his rags and on the river by himself or with Jim did he feel free and satisfied (Twain 12). Even with Jim, Huck feels a sense of uneasiness. His duty delegated by the culture is to turn Jim in, yet he was helplessly involved in doing the thing which his society disapprovedfreeing a slave. It was an action which he himself disapproved but could avoid no more than his grammatical blunders (Cox: The Fate 383). Hucks moral struggle with this situation is a central theme to the novel. It is so significant that some believe Hucks two-page struggle over whether to betray Jim is a masterpiece of metaphysically comic inversion, a sardonic, hilarious examination of conscience (Galileo: Morrow). Now this predicament of monstrous proportions is considered a metaphor for all social bondage and injustice (Grant 1013), since Twain wrote this after the Civil War. Hucks dilemma is this, should he do what his society has bred into