At a very young age, children are exposed to values before they gain the ability to reason effectively and to think critically. Whenever they misbehave, their parents correct their behaviors by means of punishment. Therefore, a misbehaved child will associate their wrongdoings with a negative emotion, deterring them from performing the punished behavior. They also learn morality by absorbing the emotions of those around them in their environment, and as a result, their feelings and behaviors are shaped by what they observe. Additionally, individuals introspect their feelings to decide whether or not their actions are considered moral. If an action makes the individual feel guilty, then he or she will conclude that it is wrong. This could not …show more content…
Upon his encounter with Jim, Miss Watson’s slave, on Jackson’s Island, Huck learns that Jim has run off. However, having already promised Jim he would not report back to Miss Watson, Huck keeps his word, despite knowing that “‘people would call me a low down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t going to tell, and I ain’t going back there anyways’”(Twain 55). This quote not only depicts Huck as a man of his word, but it also goes to paint a bigger issue here in regards to a rising moral dilemma, one between Huck and society. He is raised during a period where slavery is ubiquitous; it is a period where whites are put up on a pedestal and blacks are repressed. Therefore, it is abnormal to think that any white man, or child for that matter, would choose not to break his word on a promise to a slave. To do so would mean that he is going against what his society upholds, marking this as one of Huck’s many moral dilemmas. However, that is not enough to discourage him from doing what he feels is right because not keeping a promise is the same as disrespecting himself and hurting his self-esteem. When Huck keeps his promise, it communicates to Jim that Huck values him because like Jim, Huck too, has run away. In that case, they are not different and Huck can relate to Jim. Huck continues to learn to respect and care for Jim, not as a runaway …show more content…
In his defense, “Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it” (75). Huck is morally conflicted because he has two different belief systems to choose from, forcing him to pick his battle and interpret what is right and wrong in his own terms. On the one hand, his dad genuinely believes that the stolen item is borrowed if the stealer has the intention of paying it back to the original owner. On the other hand, the widow argues that taking anything that has not yet been paid for is stealing; there is no such thing as borrowing in the given situation. This prompts Huck to establish his own middle ground and make a compromise between the two. He decides to choose three items that he would no longer borrow, and that puts him at ease. Upon closer examination, his decision is a critical one because it shows his moral position evolving. He does not follow any of the beliefs imposed on him by his father or the widow. In fact, he adopts a new system to live by, one that caters most to his values. Ultimately, Huck does more than defying society; he rejects the beliefs he has been brought up by, which gains him the ability to grow into his own system
The book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tell the tale of a young boy who embarks on an adventure, one that leads him to find himself. Throughout the novel Huck develops a sense of morality that was always there to begin with, but not nearly as developed as it is by the end of the novel. Through living on his own, independent of societal and peer pressures, Huck is able to identify his own morals in defining what is 'right ' or 'wrong '.
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...
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 the beginning of the book Huck carelessly tends to through lives around and doesn’t seem to care about others with the exception that it would affect him. This is clearly shown when Huck and with Tom Sawyer's gang and offers up Miss Watson because “I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered [the Gang] Miss Watson - they could kill her” (6). This is when Huck offers her up to the gang in the event that he would spill of the gang’s beans because he didn't have any true family to give up. This clearly shows that Huck has no respect for another’s life and is willing to just throw someone who is good to him under the bus just so he could join a gang with his friends. A similar event occurred when he was sneaking out to get to the gangs meeting and he came across Jim. “When we was ten foot off, Tom whispered to me and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun; but I said no, he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d find out I warn’t in” (4). This event shows that Hucks reasoning not to do something...
The book I am doing my book report on is called “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain. This book revolves around a poor fourteen year old boy named Huck who runs away from his drunk father and finds friendship within a former slave, Jim, trying to escape to the free states. They adventure along the Mississippi River and end up stopping at various places throughout the novel and meet people who are all morally inadequate. “Tom told me what his plan was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it.” This quotes illustrates the dangers that come to Huck and Jim in this novel, but how Huck chooses to go with the plan anyhow, since it causes a sense of ‘adventure.’ The setting of this novel takes place before the Civil War in different towns along the Mississippi River in Missouri. I will talk about how Huck meets Jim, how he and Jim have to escape from their present issues, how they form a friendship and come across evil in their journey, and how they both end up free with a little help from Tom Sawyer.
In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck learned from the Widow Douglas, the woman who fostered him; Tom, his best friend; Jim, a slave he helped escape; and his father, a brutal drunkard. What Huck learned shaped his moral and ethical character.
People have a general belief that they know right from wrong, but how does one truly know the difference? In the fictional works of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain expertly portrays this idea through his main protagonist Huck. Some people believed that this book was nothing more than a boy 's adventure story, but Sloane discredits this idea by stating “In 1885 the Concord Library Board pulled Huck Finn from its shelves. What could possibly have been so offensive in this humorous book, seemingly directed at children?” (Sloane). Huck begins this novel with the ideals and beliefs that society has forced upon him; a both figurative and literal black and white way of thinking. Before Pap comes along and forces him to run off, he thinks of Jim as one thing; a slave. The longer Huck spends time away from
Mark Twain once described his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as “a struggle between a sound mind and a deformed conscience”. Throughout the novel, Huck wrestles with the disparity between his own developing morality and the twisted conscience of his society. In doing so, he becomes further distanced from society, both physically and mentally, eventually abandoning it in order to journey to the western frontier. By presenting the disgust of Huck, an outsider, at the state of society, Mark Twain is effectively able to critique the intolerance and hypocrisy of the Southern South. In doing so, Twain asserts that in order to exist as a truly moral being, one must escape from the chains of a diseased society.
Huck Finn, a narcissistic and unreliable young boy, slowly morphs into a courteous figure of respect and selflessness. After Pap abducts the young and civilized Huck, Huck descends into his old habits of lies and half-truths. However, upon helping a runaway slave escape, Huck regains morality and a sense of purpose. Throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck lies to characters, casting the authenticity of the story into doubt but illustrating Huck’s gradual rejection of lying for himself and a shift towards lying for others.
...te peoples property. He is told that slaves are simply lesser people than people of the white race. Because it really is what everyone believes, this prejudice is tricky to erase and stays with Huck for a long period time. Soon, Huck starts to realize that this is not true. Jim shows him that although he is a servant, he is a genuine person, not a piece of property. He has emotions, just like Huck himself. Huck continually learns through everyone incident how Jim can be a genuine, caring and beneficial person. Slowly, Huck begins to rethink a few of the prejudice things that he’s been taught most of his childhood life. He becomes his own person by choosing what he knows is right to do, instead of what exactly society says is the right thing to do. This is an example that shows how Huck’s maturity and his capability to think for himself has grown throughout this book.
At the beginning of the story Huck runs away from his friends and family to Jacksons Island. On Jacksons Island he is confronted by Jim who is a runaway slave. Jim being an African American is looked down on by society. When Huck is faced with the decision of choosing to rat on Jim or keep his secret Huck has a hard time. He knows subconsciously that Jim has done something wrong. Yet he follows his heart and decides to keep Jims secret. He says'; people would call me a low-down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum';. Huck here shows that he isn’t only running away form home but He’s running away from everything that home stands for. This happens many times in the story. Huck starts to see Jim as a friend rather then a black man. When Huck plays the
In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain presents the problem of slavery in America in the 19th Century. Twain poses this problem in the form of a character named Huckleberry Finn, a white boy raised in the antebellum South. Huck starts to question his view regarding slavery when he acquaints himself more intimately with a runaway slave while he himself tries to run away. Huck’s development as a character is affected by society’s influence on his experiences while growing up in the South, running away with Jim, and trying to save Jim. Although Huck decides to free Jim, Huck’s deformed conscience convinces him that he is doing the wrong thing.
Throughout the novel Huck struggles to follow his morals because he is afraid of abandoning the values that he had been taught by his environment. When he first travels with Jim along the river, he thinks it’s a sin to help an escaped slave because he is breaking the laws of Southern society. While thinking about his conflict he is reminded of Miss Watson. Huck asks himself, "What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean” (Twain 100)? Even though Huck feels that Jim deserves to live freely, Huck is anxious about helping him because he fears disobeying his environment’s values. Whenever Huck follows his own sense of decency, he still makes mistakes, but he knows that he is wrong.
Society establishes their own rules of morality, but would they be accepted in these days?
Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told of a young boy who traveled south with a runaway slave, Jim, after escaping his father by means of a fake murder. In the myriad of misadventures, Huck observed many things, learned about himself and about the southern society, and dynamically changed as a person. Twain satirized the gullibility and the underdeveloped moral compass of the average southerner. Through this satire and characters in the novel, he discusses numerous topics including racism, treatment of the black population, of the female population and many more. The two most prominent themes that ran throughout the book included religion versus superstition and morals. Twain portrayed superstition as morally superior to Christianity through instances of Christian hypocrisy and that the actions of superstitious characters, including Huck and Jim, tend to be the ‘correct’ ones. In doing so, it demonstrates the religious hypocrisy, as well as general behaviors, of southern society.