Huck And Jim example essay topic

Huckleberry Finn has the great advantage of being written in autobiographical form. Every scene in the book is given, not described, and the result is a vivid picture of Western life in the past. Before the novel begins, Huck Finn has led a life of absolute freedom. His alcoholic father was often missing and never paid much attention to him. Since Huck's mother is dead he is not used to following any rules. In the beginning, Huck is living with the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson.

Both women are fairly old and have no patience to raise a rebellious boy like Huck Finn. They try to make an attempt to make Huck into what they believe will be a better boy. Huck never really enjoys the life of manners, religion, and education that the Widow and her sister impose upon him. Huck decides to try and find freedom with his friend Tom Sawyer. A boy of Huck's age, Tom, promises Huck and other boys of the town a life of adventure. Huck really wants to join Tom's Gang because he feels that if he does join he will escape the boring life he leads with the Widow Douglas.

Tom Sawyer promises many things, but unfortunately, such thing did not occur. Tom's adventures turned out imaginary. Huck is disappointed that the adventures Tom promises are not real, so along with the other members, he resigned from the gang. Another person who tries to get Huckleberry Finn to change is Huck's father. His father is very antisocial and wishes to do all of the civilizing effects that Widow and Miss Watson have attempted to change in Huck. Pap is a mess: his hair is uncut and hangs like vines in front of his face, he is unshaven, and his skin is very pale.

Pap's looks reflects Huck's feelings as he demands that Huck quits school, stops reading, and avoids church. Huck managed to stay away from his father for a while, but Pap kidnaps him three or four months after Huck starts to live with the Widow and takes him to a lonely cabin deep in the Missouri woods. Once again, Huck enjoys the freedom that he had in the beginning of the book. Huck soon realizes that he will have to escape from the cabin if he wishes to remain alive. As a result, Huck makes it appear as if he was killed in the cabin while Pap was away. He leaves to go to a remote island in the Mississippi River, Jackson's Island.

After, he leaves his father's cabin Huck meets Miss Watson's slave, Jim. Huck found Jim on Jackson's Island because the slave ran away because he overheard a conversation that he will soon be sold to New Orleans. Huck begins to realize that Jim has more talents and Intelligence than Huck. They begin to get to know eachother as they float on a raft down the Mississippi River.

Huck begins to enjoy being with Jim and starts to care for him. In conclusion of chapter 11, Huck and Jim are forced to leave Jackson's Island because Huck discovers they are looking for a runaway slave. They have a friendship that is unseperable as hey keep drifting down the river as the novel continues. At the end of their journey, neither having anything left to run from as Huck's father was dead and Jim was a free man. IT would seem, then that Huck and Jim had run at thousand miles down the river and ended up where they had started from. Mark Twain is saying a lot of things in the story.

First, the book stands by firmly saying slavery is bad mostly because it is hypocritical. It is well supported considering Huck is able to interact with Jim as a human being, while the southern slave society treats Jim as an object. Furthermore, the southerner representations are pale in comparison to Huck's wits and intelligence. For example, when the slave catchers who are tricked into thinking Jim is Huck's small pox riddled father, and the whole feud thing does not show much in the line of smarts for southern slave owners. On a superficial level Huckleberry Finn might appear to be racist. The first time you read the description of Jim it is a very negative description.

Although Huck is not a racist child, he has been raised by extremely racist individuals who have ingrained some feelings of bigotry into his mind. In chapter six, Huck father fervently objects to the governments granting of suffrage to an educated black professor. Twain wants the reader to see the absurdity in this statement. Huck's father believes that he is superior to this black professor simply because of the color of his skin. When Huck first meets Jim, he makes a enormous decision, not to turn Jim in.

Many times throughout the novel Huck comes very close to rationalizing Jim's slavery. However, he is never able to see a reason why this man who has become on of his only friends, should be a slave. Through this struggle, Twain expresses his opinions of the absurdity of slavery and the importance of following one's personal conscience before the laws of society. In my opinion, Mark Twain is using race as a single element in his entire picture of the hypocrisy in his society. He isn? t showing that the whole race issue as much as he is showing the society he lives in.

He uses race to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the rich and the middle class, among other things. What other way does he show this then by demonstrating the facets of a society of snobby landowners then by showing the vulgarity of their vocabulary. The dialects of the people, white and black, what a study they are; and yet nobody talks for the sake of exhibiting a dialect. For instance, when they say? Niger.? If Mark Twain is saying anything about race, he is making an allegorical statement complaining that the civil war did not end slavery.

Also, that living conditions are still undesirable for most blacks. For example, when Jim was free for over two weeks, he suffered mostly when he had his freedom. Huck has an struggle with is conscience in regard to slavery. His conscience tells him to help the runaway to escape and to aid in stealing the property of Miss Watson, who has never injured him. It is an enormous offense that will definitely carry him to the bad place; but his feelings for Jim finally induces him to violate his conscience and risk eternal punishment in helping Jim to escape. The whole study of Huck's moral nature is as serious as it is amusing.

His confusion of wrong as right and his abnormal mendacity, could be followed to his training from birth, is a singular contribution to the investigation of human nature. Mark Twain next statement about society is Religion. The hypocrisy of religion comes when Miss Watson, because of her religion, treats blacks as objects even though the bible says that people should be treated equally. He also puts a scene in at the church, where the Shepard sons and Grangerfords have gathered to hear a sermon about brotherly love. Well at the sermon both families have guns in their hands and kill eachother after the service is through. Both the King and the Duke showed a ridiculous degree of corruptness that it is difficult to believe that all humans aren? t at least somewhat evil.

Another point made by the author is when Col. Sherbun shot the drunk Boggs and the townsfolk came after Sherbun to murder him. After Sherbun, one man with only a shotgun, held off the immense mob and made them disperse, it was obvious that no individual really had the courage to go through the murder. The idea that people are basically savages, confined for the moment by society, is shown in more than one instance, such as when the war between the Shephard sons and the Grangerfords. The aspect of people being basically hypocrites is seen at the beginning when Miss Watson displays a degree of hypocritically on insisting that Huck follow the Widow and become civilized, while at the same time deciding to sell Jim into a hard life down the river, . A final point seems to be that Man is continually fleeing from something. Mark Twain put a main character who rejects religion, yet Huck, for the most part, has the clearest view of society.

Their journey down the river sets the stage for most of Mark Twain's comments about man and society. It is when they stop off at various towns along the river that various human character flaws always seem to come out. For example, the happenings that occurred after the bringing on of the Duke and the King. These two con artists would execute the most foolish of schemes to relieve unsuspecting townspeople of their cash. The fact that, after being taken by a poor show they sent rave reviews of it to their friends to avoid admitting they had been conned showed that people in groups are afraid of losing position, and will do nearly anything to protect such.?

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.? That quote proves that there is neither a motive, moral, nor a plot. You have to put the pieces to the puzzle by your own thoughts. The warning in the book is that persons attempting to seek a moral in the story should be banished.

Mark Twain turns his knowledge of Western dialects to account. He knows that children will not read a dull book. He never makes a dull one. In my opinion, I think that he made the story to make people confused. He didn? t want anyone to know a moral to the story.

Maybe he even thought his book would sell more by writing that quote. Authors have many ideas in their minds and they have many ways to confuse you and make you curious. When it came to a point to figure out the moral, it made you more confused than anything. There were so many things. For example, religion, racism, abuse, and many other things.

There is very little of literary art in the story..