Troublesome To Do Right
With his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain was able to poke, prod, and cast doubt on the society he grew up in. But he did it subtly, through the eyes of a child. When Huck questions something, it is Twain's unobtrusive way of pointing out the moral flaws of his society. And more specifically, "The dynamic theme throughout [The Adventures of] Huckleberry Finn is the unresolved dialectic between the moral responsibility of the individual, and the morality of the society through which he moves and against which he must function."(Sims) Throughout the novel we see the way Huck responds to different moral conflicts such as; the relation of master to slave, the strife between two families, and his own inability to conform to a certain set of ideals.
The novel takes place in Missouri near the Mississippi River, and it tells the story of a young boy and a runaway slaves trip to freedom.
The cover of the first edition of Adventures of Hu...
Illustration of Jim and Huckleberry Finn, by EW Ke...
mark twain Category:Mark Twain imagesHuckleberry Finn runs away from his father who is trying to relieve him of a small fortune. And Jim runs away from his owner Miss Watson. In Miss Watson's case, she promised Jim she wouldn't sell him away from his wife and children. But when a slave trader offered her eight hundred dollars for him, she weighs her promise against the lure of complacency, and agrees to the man's terms. Modern thinking would deem this immoral but the society of Huck's time would agree with her choice, because during that time breaking a promise to a black man was not something to feel guilty about. However to Jim and Huck her actions felt wrong, but not altogether unexpected, since the idea of slavery is ingrained in the way they think. In the eyes of her community Miss Watson...