Meaning Of The Word Ransom example essay topic

Pg. 2"After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushes, and I was in a sweat to find out all abut him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more abut him, because I don't take no stock in dead people". In the beginning of the book, when Huck is first taken into Widow Douglas' house, she tries to get him to be more civilized. She reads to him from the Bible, teaches him how to read and behave, and even forces him to wear shoes. This quote was [I'm guessing] Huck's first encounter with religion, because obviously his father wouldn't have taken him to church. Huck is first intrigued by the adventures people experienced, but is quickly bored when he finds out that they all died a while ago. In this passage, Mark Twain uses Huck to show his objection to the blind faith that civilized society places towards religion.

I'm guessing Mark Twain wasn't a very religious man. This whole book is on the different downfalls of society, and I guess Mark Twain considers religion to be one of those. I do agree with him on this count. Although I'm Christian, I do agree with the various slight comments he makes throughout the book to show how people fell it's ok to do whatever as long as they can justify it by the bible or something. Pg. 12"per " aps if we keep them till they " re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they " re dead". When Huck Finn sneaks out to go play with Tom Sawyer and all their other friends, they decide to form a gang of robbers.

They decide to hold people ransom, except they don't really know what ransom is, so Tom just comes up with a meaning to the word that he thinks sounds about right. All of the boys in the gang agree. I think this quote fits in with the theme of the book "satire of society". While the meaning of the word ransom may not be a crucial topic, the concept that I think Mark Twain is trying to illustrate is that if one person says something everyone will follow. The boys have no way of knowing what the real meaning of ransom is, so they just blindly go along with whatever Tom suggests, and that is one of the biggest downfalls of society, even today. While I see that this may present a problem in society, I think it's far too harped on my authors.

People feel reassured knowing something, they don't really care if it's true or not. Like the boys; for them, the word ransom wasn't really important and it would have bothered them an awful lot more if they didn't 'know' what it meant. Pg. 294"It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another". When the Duke and the King get caught pulling one of their infamous scams, they are tarred and feathered. Huck expresses his thoughts on the subject by commenting on the cruelness of the crowd.

Mark Twain is showing through this event that thieves and liars aren't the only people that do awful things. Society is being a hypocrite in this case. All of the people in the crowd consider themselves nice, civilized, polite people, yet what they are doing to the Duke and the King is just as awful as anything. Oh the 'satire of society' in cases like these, when everyone considers themselves all righteous while doing something completely awful and irresponsible. I think this also kind of ties in with the other two quotes I've picked and the general theme. 'Satire of Society' is to me a pretty heavy set of words, but from what I see so far, Mark Twain is just saying that people don't really care what they are doing as long as they have an excuse.

And in this book he pretty much points out how ridiculous all of people's excuses are. Whether they think they are being good people to their God, or just are lead by someone who knows nothing, or are so outraged by someone's actions and so into punishing them that they don't notice they themselves are just being... well, stupid.