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how does the author play with the idea of morality?
examples of morality???

2007-03-18 04:19:39 · 4 answers · asked by buster 1 in Arts & Humanities Books & Authors

4 answers

"It seems to us, thumbing through the well-worn pages of a paperback Huckleberry Finn, that Huck's dilemma is ironic and almost humorous. But even in the post-Civil War era of the 1880s, when Mark Twain scratched out his "story for boys," Southern society was teaching its children to revere the right to property and to read the Bible. Slavery, though made illegal in the aftermath of the Civil War, was still an institution in the Southern mind, and its peculiarity could only be seen and wondered at, Huck Finn's physical surroundings symbolize the great unvoiced struggle within him; he wavers in between The River of supposed spiritual freedom and The Shore of repressive civilization, and compromises by tugging the land up onto the raft. These two worlds are no longer antagonistic "modes of experience," but are mingled together within Huck's sensibilities, fuzzed at the edges. His good heart strives to save Jim while his reverence for all he has been taught almost destroys his only true friend. In subverting the societal concept of morality, Huck finds happiness but also the overarching guilt stemming from that moral sense that has become, within him, spiritually transcendent. He becomes a slave, subservient to the corrupt conscience of the Nineteenth-Century American South. As he grapples with internal and external influences, we are never really sure of his true identity -- Huck Finn, Sarah Williams, George Peters, Tom Sawyer -- and we have the sneaking suspicion that that is just the way Mark Twain -- Samuel Clemens -- would have wanted it."

"Huckleberry Finn – Morality



Society establishes their own rules of morality, but would they be accepted in these days?



For example, throughout the novel "Huckleberry Finn ", Mark Twain depicts society as a structure that has become little more than a collection of degraded rules and precepts that defy logic. This faulty logic manifests itself early, when the new judge in town allows Pap to keep custody of Huck. "The law backs that Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property." The judge privileges Pap's "rights" to his son over Huck's welfare. Clearly, this decision comments on a system that puts a white man's rights to his "property"--his slaves--over the welfare and freedom of a black man.



Whereas a reader in the 1880s might have overlooked the moral absurdity of giving a man custody of another man, however, the mirroring of this situation in the granting of rights to the immoral Pap over the lovable Huck forces the reader to think more closely about the meaning of slavery. In implicitly comparing the plight of slaves to the plight of Huck at the hands of Pap, Twain demonstrates how impossible it is for a society that owns slaves to be just, no matter how "civilized" that society believes and proclaims itself to be.



In addition, childhood has been described by the author, as an important factor in the theme of moral education: only a child is open-minded enough to undergo the kind of development that Huck does." It was a close place. I took...up [the letter I'd written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I know it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right then, I'll go to hell"--Em dash intended here? and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming..."It, describes the moral climax of the novel. Jim has been sold by the Duke and Dauphin, and is being held by the Phelpses spending his return to his rightful owner. Thinking that being at home in St. Petersburg, even if it means Jim will still be a slave and Huck will be a captive of the Widow, would be better than being in his current state of peril far from home, Huck composes a letter to Miss Watson, telling her where Jim is. When Huck thinks of his friendship with Jim, however, and realizes that Jim will be sold down the river anyway, he decides to tear up the letter. The logical consequences of his action, rather than the lessons society has taught him, drive Huck. Huck decides that going to "hell," if it means following his gut and not society's hypocritical and cruel principles, is a better option than going to everyone else's heaven. This is Huck's true break with the world around him. At this point he decides to help Jim escape slavery once and for all, and he realizes that he, Huck, will not be re-entering the civilized world: he has moved beyond it morally.



Since Huck and Tom are young, their age lends a sense of play to their actions, which excuses them in certain ways and also heightens the profundity of the novel's commentary on slavery and society. Huck and Tom know better than the adults around them, but they lack the guidance that a proper family and community should have offered them.



Furthermore, Huck and Tom encounter individuals who seem good (Sally Phelps, for example), but Twain takes care to show us that person as a prejudiced slave-owner. "Preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar". The shakiness of the justice systems that Huck encounters lies at the heart of society's problems: terrible acts go unpunished, yet frivolous crimes, such as drunkenly shouting insults, lead to executions Sherburn's speech to the mob that has come to lynch him accurately summarizes the view of society given in this book: rather than maintaining collective welfare, society is marked by cowardice, a lack of logic, and profound selfishness."


See link 3 for more, please.

2007-03-18 04:29:21 · answer #1 · answered by johnslat 7 · 1 0

In HUCKLEBERRY FINN, it may be fruitful to look at the different poles: immorality and amorality. Take case in point Huck's dad: he behaves immorally. What are the culmination of this habit? The Duke et. al. behave amorally, and what are the culmination right here? by ability of searching on the outcome of immoral and amoral activities, you may locate the real morality that Twain is studying. carry this one step more beneficial. Is Jim's operating from slavery an ethical act? there have been those, even between the readership of Twain's unique ebook, who may have declared it to be immoral, that there replaced right into a criminal requirement that Jim be dealt with as what he replaced into: a run-away slave. How Twain wrestles with this question (the moral being seen as immoral and vice versa) is between the delights of the unconventional. From this wrestling comes an ethical thermometer for some thing else of society. sturdy success with this.

2016-12-02 04:24:46 · answer #2 · answered by ? 4 · 0 0

huckleberry finn was a white guy who helped a black guy from white ppl-dats the morality i think

2007-03-18 04:50:06 · answer #3 · answered by Preeya 5 · 0 0

he is tom sauers friend thats all i know

2007-03-18 04:27:49 · answer #4 · answered by sundari l 2 · 0 3

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