Mark Twain's Pessimistic Views Exposed in Huckleberry Finn
In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain simply wrote about a boy and the
river. In doings so Twain presents the reader with his personal view of
mankind, whether he wants to or not:
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative
will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in
it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot
will be shot. (2)
Possibly by giving us this warning Twain admits to the existence of a clear
motive, morality, and a strong plot in his masterpiece. Nonetheless,
Huckleberry Finn, through examples of hypocrisy, greed, violence, and
racism, shows Twain's pessimistic view of society and corruption of the
human race as a whole.
To understand the pessimism of the book, we must first understand
Huck. Huck is a character though whose eyes we see the ugly truth about
mankind. Huck is always on the run from people. In the beginning we see him
living a prim and proper life with the widow. He is then abducted by his
father, and for a time is relieved to get out of the moral trappings of the
town, and live sloppily, doing whatever he wanted to do. "It was kind of
lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day." (24) After some time, and
being unable to endure the abuse of his father, he runs away. Huck is as
dissatisfied by one extreme as he is by the next. Huck chooses not to take
sides on any matter, but instead be indifferent towards it. Huck avoids
moral decision making throughout the book as much as possible. In the end
of the book Twain saves Huck...
... middle of paper ...
...and subsequently the evil
and corruption synonymous with it, must follow.
Works Cited
Carey-Webb, Allen. "The Pessimistic Huckleberry Finn." English Journal 82 (November 1993): 22-34.
Clemens, Samuel. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter, et al. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Lexington: Heath, 1994. 236-419.
Hoffman, Daniel. "Black Magic--and White--in Huckleberry Finn." Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Sources Criticism. Ed. Sculley Bradley, et al. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1977. 423-436.
Kaplan, Justin. "Born to Trouble: One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn." Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case Study in Critical Controversy. Eds. Gerald Graff and James Phelan. Boston: St. Martin's, 1995. 348-359.
Huck’s situation is so extreme (the mental and physical abuse from Pap) that he cannot take it anymore. He does what he thinks is best; Huck listens to heart rather than his conscience. In order to get away from Pap, Huck organizes an elaborate plan to arrange his own death and run away – both denounced by society - from the prison cell (cabin) and Pap. Huck, for the first time in his life, had felt what it is like to be free: “The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before” (Twain 46).
When we are first introduced to Huck, he is very immature. Refusing to give in to "civilized society," he is not making a mature decision; he is merely being stubborn. Huck is unable to be mature because his father has literally beaten into him his own values and beliefs. Because of his father, Huck has almost no self-confidence. He has been taught to shun society and is unable to make a decision to accept it because of the constant threat that his father may come...
So when Huck fakes his death and runs away to live on an island he is faced with yet another problem, which revolves around the controversial issue of the time of racism. While living on the island he meets Jim, who was a slave, but Huck soon learns that he has run off and now in the process of making his way up north to Canada. Here Huck is faced with his first tough decision, to go with Jim and help him, or just go and tell the officials of a runaway slave and get the reward. Huck reluctantly joins Jim and promises to get him to free land for the sake of a good adventure, but he still feels guilty to be conversing with a runaway slave, let alone help him escape. Along the way Huck has many challenges, which are just like this one.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel written by Mark Twain during the late 1800’s (Mintz). The book brought major controversy over the plot, as well as the fact that it was a spin-off to his previous story, Adventures of Tom Sawyer. This book has remained a success due to Twain’s interesting techniques of keeping the audience’s attention. Chapters eleven and twelve of “Huckleberry Finn,” uses a first person limited point of view to take advantage of the use of dialogue while using many hyperboles to add drama to entertain the reader by creating description within the story without needing to pause and explain.
Toward the beginning of the novel, Huck has no problem robbing caravans, kidnapping wealthy people for money, and even killing the families of the gang formed by him and his friends if they became turncoats and told of this gang. He was even disappointed when all the gang did was cause trouble at a Sunday school meeting. Later on in the novel, Huck is also faced with a moral dilemma when he comes across Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave. As they travel down the river, huck mentions, “I begun to get it through my head that 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 got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest” (Twain 153). Back in that time, it most certainly would not be a moral dilemma; instead, it would be very simple: bring the slave back to his owner. However, when Jim asked Huck to promise that he wouldn’t tell, Huck replied with, “Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Ablitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell” (Twain 103). In the chosen passage, it is very clear that Huck realizes what is happening there, and believes it to be wrong. Huck thinks to himself, “this is another one that I’m letting him rob her of her money. And when she got through, they all just laid
Despite all the criticism, of racism and other questionable material for young readers, Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn is a superbly written novel, which in the opinion of this reviewer should not be remove the literary cannon. Twain’s novel is a coming of age story that teaches young people many valuable lessons and to some extend makes students reexamine their own lives and morals. The most common argument for its removal from the literary canon is that the novel is too racist; it offends black readers, perpetuates cheap slave-era stereotypes, and deserves no place on today’s bookshelves. However one must ask if Twain is encouraging traditional southern racism or is Twain disputing these idea.
Life in the late eighteen hundreds was very different from the life we know today. Not only was there more inequality, there were also more health concerns and lapses in education. Mark Twain, in his book “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” has given us a special look into the past through the eyes of a young boy. Though this book is one of, if not the most highly criticized books in the American school system, it is also one of the most highly renowned. Through the criticism, Twain has given us a golden reflective opportunity.
...cal Edition, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Sources Criticism. Ed. and Trans. Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beaty, E. Hudson Long, and Thomas Cooley. New York: Norton, 1977. 328-335.
Helgeson, James G., and Eric G. Gorger. "The Price Weapon: Developments In U.S. Predatory Pricing Law." Journal Of Business-To-Business Marketing 10.2 (2003): 3. Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Pricing is an important aspect of every business. Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO) use pricing to create financial projections, establish a break-even point, and calculate profit and loss margins (Power Point, 2005). It is the only element in the marketing mix that produces revenue. Price is also one of the most flexible elements of the marketing mix as it can be changed very quickly. This is usually done to beat competitor prices in an attempt to fix the product’s market value position very low (Anderson & Bailey, 1998). After all, high prices make it difficult to become the market share leader. The leading US retailer, Wal-Mart, is an expert at low product pricing as evident in 2004 with $250 billion dollars in sales to their 138 million weekly shoppers. However, they are also responsible for reducing prices so low that it drives specialty stores out of business. This is the effect Wal-mart has had on many toy stores and has almost closed the doors of the famous toy store Toys “R” Us Inc.
Concentration Option. Focus on just one product or just one arena. Instead of offering everything under the sun from food to long distance to mortgages and auto sales, streamline the offerings. Priceline could focus exclusively on travel related products. Flights, hotels, vacation packages, cruises etc. Alternatively priceline could focus on just ticket sales. Not only airline tickets but also movie tickets, sporting tickets, theatrical tickets and others such as museums and amusement parks.
Price is the values entirety that consumers trade for the advantages of having or utilizing the product or services. Different places and cultural have different spending culture. Therefore the price has to be relevant according to the product offer because it can reflect the image of a
Price discrimination is a corporate strategy where a seller offers the same product to customers at different prices. This practice is a technique where sellers appeal to a wide range of customers and capitalize on opportunities to maximize profits. The word discrimination often has a poor connotation. However, in terms of finances, the word discrimination merely denotes to how sellers can sway market price in order to meet the demand of buyers. In the United States, price discrimination generally is discussed and debated at the higher education level. In higher education, price discrimination denotes a scenario where academies charge unlike tuition prices to students for the same quality of education. This practice can be done at both the university and departmental levels as well. In order for price discrimination to occur, the seller must have the ability to adjust price. Price discrimination is also used by a seller that is offering a product that has a strong consumer demand with few alternatives. This is done because customers are willing to pay more for a given product. This entry provides examples of price discrimination in the private sector and in higher education.
The modern theory of price discrimination began with the work of Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877- 1959) and is defined by Machlup (1955): "Price discrimination may be defined as the practice of a firm or group of firms of selling (leasing) at prices disproportionate to the marginal costs of the products sold (leased) or of buying (hiring) at prices disproportionate to the marginal productivities of the factors bought (hired)". But in simpler terms, "price discrimination is often defined as charging different customers different prices for the same or highly similar offering" (Smith, 2004). The motive behind this is to increase profit by reducing consumer surplus. If the same price is charged to all consumers, some potential revenue is lost since some of the consumers would have been prepared to pay more. But before answering the question of whether firms should price discriminate or not, we will have to distinguish between the various types of price discrimination and before that it is important to note that there are three necessary conditions for a firm to practise price discrimination, namely, the firm must be a price maker, the elasticity of demand must be different in the different markets and finally, the market must be clearly separated.