Alienation of Huckleberry Finn in the Advertures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain is about the great adventures that Huck finn has with his slave Jim on the Missouri River. The story tells not only about the adventures Huck has, but more of a deeper understanding of the society he lives in. Twain had Huck born into a low class society of white people; his father was a drunken bum and his mother was dead. He was adopted by the widow Douglas who tried to teach him morals, ethics, and manners that she thought fit in a civilized society. Huck never cared for these values and ran away to be free of them. During Huck’s adventure with Jim he unknowingly realized that he didn't agree with society’s values and could have his own assumptions and moral values. Twain uses this realization to show how the civilized and morally correct social values that was introduced to Huck was now the civilized and morally contradicting values. In order for Huck to alienate himself from society and reveal the hypocrisy of society’s values. Twain uses the morals of the widow Douglas to insure Huck’s understanding of how contradicting these morals really are. “The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me” (Twain 1). It’s shown from this quote that the widow Douglas most truly believed that her moral values where the correct and civilized morals. But it wasn’t only the the widow Douglas who taught Huck, her sister Mrs. Watson taught Huck the ideas of Christianity and read stories from the Bible to him as well. They both tried to insure that Huck turn in to the what they believed was the civilized and religiously correct human being. “Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't c... ... middle of paper ... ...f him as a person. He then finally thought of how Jim called him honey and how Jim was all he had. “I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt tow things, and I knowed it. I studies a minute, sort of holding my breath and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” – and tore it up” (Twain 210). This moment was greatest turning point of the book. Mark Twain throughout the book showed Huckleberry Finns personal growth on how he started from the bottom as a lonely, racist, immature kid who knew nothing to where he is now, by finally breaking away from society’s values he was taught in the beginning. He has alienated himself from the from that society and revealed how in fact these values were hypocritical. He realized that he can choose his own morals and that the one he chooses is the correct one.

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