There are moments in our life that define who we will become; those moments are both good and bad. Unfortunately it is easier to remember the bad instead of the good, easier to remember what happened to us instead of what you did. But as Brain Bosworth once said “There is no one definig moment that kills you or makes you.” –Bosworth Such as Mark Twain’s charming character Huck Finn and his struggles to define himself. I believe that the most important scene and struggle in the story is his decision about the letter to Miss Watson. This is the most important scene because it shows Huck’s change in his upbringing, morality, and religion.
Huckleberry Finn was taught since he was a child that black men are to be slaves and nothing else, by not turning Jim in with the letter he banishes all that he was taught, making the letter scene the most influential. When Huck Finn had to settle down at Miss Watson for a while he is forced to learn how to be a gentlemen; he must go to church, go to school, wear the right clothes, and talk the right way. “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, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.” He then runs away to get away from all of the fuss to then find Jim, they become friends and many other adventures ensue until Huck writes a letter meant for Miss Watson. To send the letter would turn Jim in, however Huck has grown attached and could not fathom turning Huck in. By not turning Jim in Huck turn into more than just a boy he has turned into a man that ...
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... Miss Watson. The last reason the letter scene is most important would be that this scene is where Huck throws out all of his ideas about religion out the proverbial window. There is no doubt “this is a book about something.”-C.S. Lewis
Works Cited
Aesope, Aesope's Fables. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. aesopsel.html>. Moses, Biblbegateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. passage/?search=Exodus+20%3A13&version=KJV>. Bosworth, Brainy Quote. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. quotes/keywords/defining_moment.html>. Emerson, Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. quotes/1758578-self-reliance>. C.S. Lewis, Quoteable. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
168313-this-is-a-book-about-something>.
Maturity is not a fickle expression such as happiness or frustration, but rather an inherent quality one gains over time, such as courage or integrity. Before maturity can be expressed, the one who expresses it must have significant confidence in himself, since self-confidence is the root of maturity. Being flexible and formulating one's own opinions or ideas are aspects of maturity, but neither is possible without self-confidence. The greatest aspect of maturity is the ability to make decisions which society does not agree with. Whether or not one follows through with these ideas is not important. What is important is the ability to make the decision. These decisions represent the greatest measure of maturity.
Throughout Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck learns a variety of life lessons and improves as a person. Huck goes through a maturing process much different than most, he betters a conscience and begins to feel for humanity versus society. His trip down the river can be seen as a passage into manhood, where his character changes as he can relate with the river and nature.
Jim's character traits are easy to over look because of his seeming ignorance, but in reality Jim possessed some qualities that created a positive influence on Huck. He began by demonstrating to Huck how friends teach friends. His honest compassion also eventually causes Huck to resist the ideas society has placed upon him, and see Jim as an equal-- rather than property that can be owned. Huck knew he was going against society, and of the consequences that he could receive for freeing a slave. "It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame", (269-270). Huck then claims, "All right, then, I'll go to hell…"(272) This shows that Huck was willing to put himself on the line for a slave, because he ceased to view Jim as property and recognized him as a friend. At the beginning of the story Huck would have never done this, but after the many adventures that occur, Jims unconditional love for Huck pierces the shell society placed ar...
Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the greatest American novels ever written. The story is about Huck, a young boy who is coming of age and is escaping from his drunken father. Along the way he stumbles across Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who has run away because he overhead that he would be sold. Throughout the story, Huck is faced with the moral dilemma of whether or not to turn Jim in. Mark Twain has purposely placed these two polar opposites together in order to make a satire of the society's institution of slavery. Along the journey, Twain implies his values through Huck on slavery, the two-facedness of society, and represents ideas with the Mississippi River.
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.
Huckleberry Finn – The Changes of His Character Throughout the Novel. & nbsp; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is a novel about a young man's search for identity. Huckleberry Finn goes through some changes and learns some life lessons throughout his journey. Huck changes from being just an immature boy at the beginning of the novel to being a more mature man who looks at things from a different perspective now. & nbsp; At the beginning of the novel, Huck tends to have an immature side to him. There are some things in the beginning that show that Huck still has a very childish side to him. They get down on one thing when they don't know anything about it."
In lieu of his escape, Jim emphasized his feelings of becoming a free man. Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom (p. 238). Huck came to the realization that Jim was escaping for a far different reason than he, and began to see this “nigger’s” freedom as his own fault; he was an accomplice. Huck’s conscience became plagued by the fact that Jim was escaping the custody of his rightful owner, and he was doing nothing to stop this. In Huck’s eyes, Jim was essentially the property of poor old Ms. Watson, who didn’t do anything less than teach Jim his manners and his books. Altogether, Huck felt that he was doing wrong by concealing this, and felt miserable to say the least.
In Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn, like most growing children, has many changes in his personality. Throughout the novel Huck constantly learns new things and, despite a few setbacks, he uses them to mature. Through this maturity, Huck becomes more caring and wise, unlike his blithe and childish personality in the beginning of the the novel. Twain characterizes Huck as any other child by telling us his path to maturity. Huck realizes who he is and what he believes.
Tom is intelligent, creative, and imaginative, which is everything Huck wishes for himself. Because of Tom's absence in the movie, Huck has no one to idolize and therefore is more independent. Twain's major theme in the novel is the stupidity and faults of the society in which Huck lives. There is cruelty, greed, murder, trickery, hypocrisy, racism, and a general lack of morality. All of these human failings are seen through the characters and the adventures they experience. The scenes involving the King and Duke show examples of these traits.
...e end of the novel, Huck and the reader have come to understand that Jim is not someone’s property or an inferior man, but an equal. To say that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a racist novel is absurd, but there are always some hot-heads claiming that the novel is racist. These claims are not simply attempts to damage the image of a great novel, they come from people who are hurt by racism and don’t like seeing it in any context. However, they must realize that this novel and its author are not racist, and the purpose of the story is to prove black equality. It is vital for the reader to recognize these ideas as society’s and to recognize that Twain throughout the novel does encourage racist ideas, he disputes them. For this reason, and its profound moral implication, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be removed from the literary canon. [1056]
Huck Finn learns from the actions of people around him, what kind of a person he is going to be. He is both part of the society and an outlier of society, and as such he is given the opportunity to make his own decisions about what is right and what is wrong. There are two main groups of characters that help Huck on his journey to moral maturation. The first group consists of Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and the judge. They portray society and strict adherence to rules laid out by authority. The second group consists of Pap, the King, and the Duke. They represent outliers of society who have chosen to alienate themselves from civilized life and follow no rules. While these characters all extremely important in Huck’s moral development, perhaps the most significant character is Jim, who is both a fatherly figure to Huck as well as his parallel as far as limited power and desire to escape. Even though by the end of the novel, Huck still does not want to be a part of society, he has made a many choices for himself concerning morality. Because Huck is allowed to live a civilized life with the Widow Douglas, he is not alienated like his father, who effectively hates civilization because he cannot be a part of it. He is not treated like a total outsider and does not feel ignorant or left behind. On the other hand, because he does not start out being a true member of the society, he is able to think for himself and dismiss the rules authority figures say are correct. By the end of the novel, Huck is no longer a slave to the rules of authority, nor is he an ignorant outsider who looks out only for himself. This shows Huck’s moral and psychological development, rendering the description of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as a picaresq...
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is an American classic which analyzes and satirizes most if not all of the major issues at the time of its making. These issues are viewed through the eyes of the twelve-year-old Huck who has a unique perspective on the world due to his lack of family and overall wild nature. Huck’s innocence supports the novel as a whole through supporting Huck’s perspective on people, and his innocence also helps begin his journey and transforms as he grows throughout the novel.
Huckleberry Finn didn’t have a father to look after him, therefore he did not have all of the knowledge he was supposed to for the real world. Instead, he lived with the Widow Douglas. “The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me. I got into my old rage and my sugar hogshead again, and was free and satisfied” (Twain 1) Huck feels like he does not fit in and that Widow Douglas is always trying to change him to make him just like everybody else. Huckleberry is more an independent person, “Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry…Why don’t you try to behave” (Twain 3). Huck didn’t know what to do or how to act. He was his own person and he had his own motives because he had no role model, nobody to look up to. “He was most free – and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way… it...
...y Miss Watson in her will. Jim’s struggles had not been necessary for him to be free but had been for the emotional growth of Huck and his freedom from society’s view of slavery. Huck is also revealed to be free from Pap as it is finally reported to him that his father was the dead person found on the river. The ending of the novel, however, finds Huck still in the same place of trying to escape civilization but Huck is no longer seen as the poor uneducated boy rather intelligent young man who does not want to be part of the middle class hypocrisy. The most profound change throughout the book is the view of Jim and thus of slavery. At first Jim is a background character as are all slaves, his importance as a human being surfaced throughout the book as well as the strength of his character. Through this change Twain sends a strong message about slavery to his reader.
In the beginning, Huckleberry Finn hasn?t fully formed opinions on topics such as slavery. He is quite immature and content to just have ?adventures? with his friends. During his journey on the raft, he learns much more about himself through his dealings with others. He establishes his very own standards of right and wrong. Huck?s most important lessons are learned through Jim. He learns to see Jim as a person rather than as a slave: ?I knowed he was white inside? (263). More than any other character in the book, Jim is a catalyst for Huck?s maturity. Through Jim as well as other people he meets along the way, Huck becomes a more defined person who?s more fully himself. His development through the course of the novel proves The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be a gradual journey toward growth and maturity.