Lord Of The Flies Vs. Huck Fin

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Responsibility

In today’s society, human beings must learn to take care of something or someone,and that is a responsibility that they must uphold. In both the Lord of the Flies, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the responsibility of the boys is to manage by themselves without any adults to take care of them. The events in William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies can be easily compared to those of Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, because the main characters both have major responsibilities. There are two responsibilities that the characters came in contact with, taking care of people,including themselves, and being responsible enough to do the right thing. Thus, responsibility helps individuals to evolve and mature.

Taking care of yourself, as well as others is an enormous responsibility. In both books, the main characters must take care of themselves because they do not know who they can trust. The boys in the Lord of the Flies basically have to live their own lives, for they are on an island with no one to run to except themselves, or some of the other boys that they trust. Although, the ones they trust are already fending for themselves. The characters all go through changes as they adjust to their new world, and become different people because of it. In example to this, Jack seems like a strong willed character at the start of the book, but the other boys never would have imagined he would turn into a cold blooded killer. Therefore, they must learn to take care of themselves for they can not depend on Jack or any of the older boys, to be there for each and every one of them. It is proven that each boy has this responsibility in the following quote;

“Merridew turned to Ralph. ‘Aren’t there any grown-ups?’ ‘No.’
Merridew sat down on a trunk and looked round the circle. ‘Then we’ll have to look after ourselves.’” (Golding 17)

This is an immense responsibility for the boys, because they never had to live on their own before they arrived on the island. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both Jim, the runaway nigger, and Huck choose the responsibility of taking care of themselves. This is because they both run away from the lives they had been living.

“But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat ‘uz killed in dat shanty ef it warn’t you?

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