Place For Huck example essay topic

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is an acclaimed work by one of America's famous early writers, Samuel LanghornClemens. Mr. Clemens wrote under the pen name of Mark Twain. The book was written in 1884. This book traces the story of a young man named Huckleberry Finn, or Huck for short, from conformity to the Southern way of thinking, to his own ideas. The story begins when he is trying to become what he calls ' by a widow and a woman named Miss Watson in the small town of Hannibal, Mississippi. His Pap, the town drunk finds out that Huck has found a large sum of money.

When the judge of the town wont give Huck to his father because of Pap's raucous behavior, Pap kidnaps Huck. He takes him to a cabin where they live together. Paris abusive towards Huck, and locks him in the cabin whenever he leaves. Huck formulates a plan to escape, faking his own death, and implements it. He escapes down the Mississippi river in a canoe. Stopping at an island near Hannibal Huck discovers Jim, a runaway slave from his old house in town.

They set off together down the Mississippi for wild adventures together. The meet up with scoundrels and murders frequently, and every time Huck outsmarts all the obstacles put in his way as he and Jim travel to the Ohio river. Once there he and Jim could travel up the Ohio to the north and Jim would be a free man. But they miss the Ohio by accident and keep going down the wide Mississippi.

They have adventures to numerous to record, at the end of the adventure Jim is a willed free when his previous owner dies and Huck, with a new outlook on southern to move on to new territory. In The Adventures ofHuckelberry Finn, Huck is the narrator. The character of Huck Finn was very different than the society that he was born into. Mr. Twain uses Huck open mindedness as a window to let humor and the books points and morals shine through. Huck always takes things very literary. This not only adds to the humor of the book, but it also lets some of the books deeper messages come through.

In the first scenes of the book Huck is struggling to understand the concepts of Miss Watson's heaven and hell. He finds her harp strumming view of heaven boring and he wants to be in an exciting place. When Miss Watson tells Huck that he will get anything he prays for, he takes it very literally and decides to pray for fishing line, which he gets. But praying for fishing hooks didn't seem to work, when he asks her to pray for him to get some fishing hooks she calls him an idiot. These are both gentle pokes at southern religion. Christianity practiced a people so very pious, like Miss Watson, who can still treat their human slaves like property.

This is an ongoing theme in the book. Twain points out some of the absurd incongruence's between Christianity and the lifestyle of most of the south. Huck has not conformed to societies general way of thinking. When he is with the widow and Miss Watson, he begins to change, but Pap steals him away and he reverts back to a much more practical lifestyle.

Huck places very little value on the large sum of money that he has in the bank, while he finds smaller sums more 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.

Huck placed his value on free living. He saw no reason for any of the things society valued when you could float down the grand Mississippi with a friend. The isolation on the Mississippi River affords a place for Huck to be Jim's equal. On the plantation Jim was just a slave, and even though Huck liked Jim back then, they could never have been friends because Jim was a slave and huck was white. At first Huck had grave misgivings about helping Jim escape, but he gradually decided that what he had observed of Jim was the basis on which he would judge him.

Jim loved Huck and wouldn't bother to wake huck up at night to take the watch. Jim always looked out for Huck and talked with him. He showed Huck that he loved his family just like a white man loved his family. Society has impressed upon Huck the concept that slavery was alright, but when he comes to know Jim as a human and not a price of property his concept changes. And at the climax of the book decides tha the would rather go to hell, than to let Jim fall back into slavery.

If Huck had been a member of society, he wouldn't have even thought of looking for a person inside of Jim. But because of his open mindedness in taking things at face value he gradually became aware that Jim was a beautiful person. Not just a 'nigger' or a piece of property. He forms new ideas about himself and the world around him.

At the end of the book we find how right Huck is about Jim. We find that southern culture hasn't corrupted Huck's common sense. And how evil the concept f slavery really is. Especially when practiced by Christians who want to force t hier religion onto the very people who they are enslaving, a concept against the very basic Christian doctrine of humility and brotherly love. Huck has broken through all they pettiness and superficiality of that culture to form new ideas and values of his own. Mr. Twain showed us the power of an open mind in a beautiful story.

And the character of Huck Finn's journey from ignorance to manhood by simply using his common sense..