Society and a person’s inner nature are always conflicting. In the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, Huck’s definition of the word “civilized” changes throughout his experiences and encounters with other characters.
While Huck lives with The Widow and Miss Watson, they try to mold him into the ideal young boy. Huck to the reader’s knowledge, has never had anyone to tell him to act a certain way, before the widow and Miss Watson. Huck when he went to go live with the Widow he claimed that “allowed she would sivilize me” (Twain 1). Huck moves into the Widow’s house after his Pap leaves town, and hoping that Huck would not turn into his drunken father, they try to make Huck a better and more refined person. In their efforts
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In the town, Huck feels pressured to be civilized, whilst on the island, he feels free. The first morning on the island, Huck says he is “comfortable and satisfied” (Twain 36). Bennett Kravits who wrote "Reinventing the world and reinventing the self in Huck Finn” helps to prove the point that Huck feels free on the island by saying “ Huck arrives on the Island convinced he will be able to abandon civilization and refashion himself in a world of his own”. Huck liked the idea of being his own person, without authority. From the very moment that Huck gets on the island, he is determined to start fresh in the world. Huck wanted to take control of his own life by saying “ I was the boss of it” (Twain 39). Kravits even goes to say that Huck is “desperate to leave behind [the world]”. By leaving the world behind, Huck will be able to create and reinvent himself, as his own person. Even when Huck is alone, he fears that someone will find him and take him back to society. Huck still had fears saying “... I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck” (Twain 40). Huck could not sleep well at night, because he would wake up every so often in a panic that someone had caught him. Kravits says that Huck fears “a civilization that [he] desperately seeks to leave forever”. At this point in the novel, Huck does not think about being civilized, he just thinks about his …show more content…
Through his experiences, Huck has learned to be his own person. Huck forms his own ideas about Jim, who is a slave. It is civil in Huck’s society to see one’s self above a black man. But by Huck saying “I knowed he was white inside” (Twain 283). Marcia Lusted who wrote “Mark Twain … activist!” agrees with this point by saying that “Huck comes to see Jim not as a runaway slave, but as his equal and his friend”. These statements conclude that Huck has a moral center, and that he does not see race, but the person themself. When Hucks learns of Pap’s death, he realizes he can not be independent. Kravits agrees with this claim by saying “Huck finds himself trapped once again in the grasp of civilization”. Huck once again is in society. Richard Jr. Ernsberger who wrote “Andrew Levy: have we misread Huckleberry Finn?” said “Huck [would] like to break the cycle, but is fairly locked into it”. BY the cycle he means society. Huck wants to get out of society in a whole At the end of his adventures, Huck understands that he does not want to be in society. Aunt Sally wants to adopt Huck, but he does not want to be adopted, by saying “...Aunt sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it” (Twain 293). At the beginning of the novel, Huck returns to the widow’s house, only learning she wanted to civilize him. So Huck finding out that now Aunt Sally wants to adopt him, Huck cannot stand it.
Huck has been raised in a high-class society where rules and morals are taught and enforced. He lives a very strict and proper life where honesty and adequacy is imposed. Huck being young minded and immature, often goes against these standards set for him, but are still very much a part of his decision-making ability and conscience. When faced to make a decision, Hucks head constantly runs through the morals he was taught. One of the major decisions Huck is faced with is keeping his word to Jim and accepting that Jim is a runaway. The society part of Hucks head automatically looks down upon it. Because Huck is shocked and surprised that Jim is a runaway and he is in his presence, reveals Hucks prejudice attitude that society has imposed on him. Huck is worried about what people will think of him and how society would react if they heard that Huck helped save a runaway slave. The unspoken rules th...
Throughout the entire novel of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the only seemingly civilized place there is, is away from civilization itself, on the raft. In fact, every time to raft touches the shore, Huck Finn finds himself in a place that's even more corrupt and less civilized then the last. On the raft things seemed to be always quiet, and sometimes foggy, but on land Huck could see everything, including the awful reality of what is known as civilization. People are brutal beings who kill each other for no good reason, and they torture each other in cruel and unusual ways. Huck is faced with one of these realities when he gets caught in between a feud between two families; the Grangerfords and the Shepardsons. These two families seem to mindlessly hate each other. Their only reason for this boiling
Life on land was filled with many difficulties. There were many rules that Huck had to follow set by both the widow and his father. The widow’s main goal was to “civilize” Huck into a member of society. She expected Huck to go to school, wear clean clothes, sleep in his bed, and go to church. She just wanted him to be like a normal child of his age. Even though Huck bends the rules a bit and tries to sneak a smoke here and there, he eventually grows to like living under the widow’s protection. He proves this point when he says, "Living in a house, and sleeping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a littl...
Before Huck sets out on his raft adventure, he is exposed to the values and morals of his poor, drunken father. Pap Finn instills a "Southern race prejudice" and leads Huck to believe "that he detests Abolitionists" (374). Huck comes into conflict with this philosophy as he journeys on the raft with Jim. He can not decide if he is wrong in helping Jim escape slavery or if the philosophy is wrong. The education of Huck also stirs some values from Pap. When Pap tells him that education is useless, Huck is confused because the Widow Douglas told him that education was important. As a result, Huck's values towards education are uncertain. Pap Finn, as a figure of the lower class, does his part to confuse the growing morals of his son.
From the beginning of the book, it is shown that Huck is forced to conform to what others think is best for him. Huckleberry was taken in by Widow Douglas because his dad wasn’t a part of his life anymore and he needed a parent figure. “The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it any longer I lit out” (11). By trying to civilize Huckleberry, Widow Douglas was imposing what she assumed was best for him and wasn’t listening to what he thought or wanted. Huck was a very opinionated person and often spoke his mind with no remorse, which Widow Douglas didn’t like. “All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she was going to live so as to go to the good place” (12). We see here Widow Douglas explaining to Huck how her way of life was the best and to get into “the good place”, or heaven, that he must live his life like hers. Twain portrays the widow as unpleasant and preachy to make it so the reader sympathizes with Huck as a young boy who needs to get out of ...
Huck struggles with himself through his moral beliefs. Huck struggles with himself because he grows up in the lower class and when he moves in with the Widow it is hard for him to adjust to the life of the upper class. Huck is speaking to the reader at the beginning of the novel about events that have occurred in the previous novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huck explains how he was adopted by The Widow Douglas and how she tried to civilize him. “The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time … when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out … But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back” (2). This passage shows how Huck is being civilized by the widow and since he is from the lower class ...
In his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses nature not only as ally, but as a deterrent in Huck Finn's search for independence and Jim's search for freedom. The most prominent force of nature in the novel was the Mississippi River. The river was not only their escape route, but perhaps it became their biggest enemy because it was always unpredictable. Nature is the strongest factor in the novel because in a completely different geographical setting the story would have had not only a different outcome, but Huck and Jim might never have found friendship and freedom. Twain changes his tone when describing the Mississippi River from wry and sarcastic to flowing and daydreaming. This change in tone illustrates his own appreciation for the beauty and significance that nature holds for him.
...ore closely related to a bildungsroman than to a simple picaresque novel. Huck shows considerable development, both morally and psychologically. Through the people he meets, he gets a taste of many spectrums of society and morals. This is the very last line of the novel: “But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” (AHF, 220). The last line clearly shows he is not the same little boy that he was at the beginning of the book. Because he has been there before, he is no longer ignorant of “there”. By choosing to make his own choices, Huck makes a steady path towards maturity not only of his morals, but of himself as well.
In the beginning of the story, Huck seems to feel at ease to be with his father instead of being with the widow, "It was kind of lazy and jolly, lying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no book nor study." (Twain 24) Yet, Hucks' father is not exactly the father figure a child would want. He's an abusive, "But by and by Pap got to handy with his hick'ry and I couldn't stand it. I was all over welts." (Twain 24) and he's not thoughtful of Huck. Once Huck figures his father is crazed and is an alcoholic, Twain, through Huck's eyes, gives readers a feeling of fear towards Huck's father. "There was Pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was crawling up his legs." (Twain 28) "Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone, and he rolled imself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying." (29)
...d his adventure with Jim on the hero’s journey, he now sees the world a different way, a different way that may cause Huck severe consequences if society became involved. Huck believes his ways are right and the society’s ways are wrong. Today the society we live in was Huck’s perspective in the years before the Civil war. Back then during that time society was more strict and involved in slavery. The way we think and act today would probably
In the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck rejects "sivilized" life. He dreads the rules and conformities of society such as religion, school, and anything else that will eventually make him civilized. He feels cramped in his new surroundings at the Widow Douglas's house. He would rather be in his old rags and sugar-hogshead because he was free and satisfied. He felt out of place when he tried being "sivilized" because he grew up fending for himself and to him it felt really lonely. Huck Finn grew up living in the woods and pretty much raised himself because his pap was a drunk. He never had a civilized lifestyle and he believed that his way of living was good enough for him. He was free to do what ever he liked and that is how he learned to live. He did not believe in school because all you need to know to live is not found in a book that you read at school. He believed that you learned by living out in the wild. Huck would rather be an individual than conform to society. Huck would rather follow his heart then his head and because of this Huck is ruled as a bad person because in society your suppose to use your head. Huck is being penalized for his beliefs and he does not want to be apart of a lifestyle that does not support his ways. For instance his choice not to turn in Jim shows that Huck understands why Jim is escaping. Huck sees Jim as a friend not as a slave and so he truly is able to see that society's way of treaty Jim is wrong. Huck is portrayed as a boy who sees life at face value and not by the set "standards" of the "sivilized" society. The rejection of the "sivilized" lifestyles shows that Huck does not agree with it rules. Because of this, he is able to see life from different perspectives. He can sympathize with all the class in society. He learns to figure out what is morally correct and wrong. Through out his journey down the river, Huck is able to learn more about himself and others.
The Widow Douglas and Miss Watson try to "sivilize" Huck by making him stop all of his habits such as smoking, etc. They try to reverse all of his teaching from the first twelve years of his life and force him to become their stereotypical good boy. The rest of the town also refused to view him as good and he was considered undesirable. The only time that the town's people were able to put away their views of Huck was when there was excitement to be found, like when they all crowded on the steamboat to see if the cannons could bring Huck's body to the surface. Everyone got interested in him and tried to show that they cared about him, but this is only after he is presumed dead.
In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain illustrates several traits that are common in mankind. Among these traits are those that are listed in this essay. Through characters in the story Twain shows humanity's innate courageousness. He demonstrates that individuals many times lack the ability to reason well. Also, Twain displays the selfishness pervasive in society. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, many aspects of the human race are depicted, and it is for this reason that this story has been, and will remain, a classic for the ages.
At the beginning of the tale, Huck struggles between becoming ?sivilized? and doing what he pleases. He doesn?t want to listen to the rules that the Widow Douglas and her sister force upon him, even though he knows the widow only wants what is best for him. Miss Watson pushes Huck away from society even more through the way she treats him. She teaches him religion in such a dreary way that when she speaks of heaven and hell, Huck would rather go to hell than be in heaven with her: ?And she told all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there?I couldn?t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn?t try for it? (12-13). Huck is taught a very different kind of morality by his father who believes ?it warn?t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back?? (70). He likes his father?s idea of morality better because he is not yet mature enough to fully understand right and wrong, although living with the widow...
In Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the adults in Huck's life play an important role in the development of the plot. Pap, Huck's father, constantly abuses the boy, never allowing him to become an intelligent or decent human being. He beats and attacks Huck whenever they meet up, and tries to destroy Huck's chances of having a normal life. This situation is balanced by several good role models and parent figures for Huck. Jim, the runaway slave, embraces Huck like a son, and shares his wide ranging knowledge with him. He also protects Huck on the journey down the river. Widow Douglas is another good role model for Huck. She tries to civilize him and make him respectable to society, while also being caring and compassionate. There is a stark contrast in the ways Huck is treated by adults, and all have an affect on him.