Civilization versus Freedom

Edit: The formatting makes the bulk of the text unpleasing to read. I'll fix it soon.


I thought it might be interesting to share our short papers and discuss some talking points as the year rounds out. I also deprive you of my final few posts and how could I do that?
Comments welcome-post your paper too.
                                                                                                           

Many human beings like to explore the world around them, free of bondage to any

particular place, people, or culture. It appears natural that a person would want to live within a

society that feel morally aligned with or, if not in a society or civilization, in a manner in which

they are operating on their own moral code. In the satirical novel Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn by Mark Twain, this quality is ever so present in the main character, Huckleberry, who

displays a level of discomfort when he has to live a stagnant lifestyle that leads to a rudimentary

existence. Huck shows an inclination to venture in nature, beyond the southern society he does

not feel at home in. Over the course of the novel, we see the youth’s disdain for his society grow,

as he witnesses examples of hypocrisy, deceit and gullibility, and dishonor, while experience

contempt, gilt, and moral confusion and disagreement. It is because of this inner turmoil and

overall unpleasant experience in towns along the Mississippi river, that huckleberry Finn rejects

civilization he was born into, and repels the chance to be socialized in the southern United States.

In Mark Twain’s sequel to the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the characters in the novel

often display an array of traits the Huckleberry Finn finds unappealing. These characteristics,

usually highlighted in dialogue and huckleberry’s standard chronological narration, are used by

Mark Twain in his social commentary on race, religion, culture, and other nationally discussed

issue of his day. This allows the reader to identify irony, hypocrisy, and contradictions, enabling

them to project their own experiences onto the mind of the characters and interpolate what they

are experience, often when there is insufficient information or an inhibiting factor that does not

allow one to make a conclusion on the matter. These character traits are peppered liberally

throughout the novel, along the reader, casual and academic, to make connections within the

book and draw inferences about their meaning as they apply to real life, for days on end. As a

result of the interconnectedness of Twain’s satirical commentary on southern culture throughout

the novel, one would find it difficult to discuss the issues in any organized fashion in regards to

theme, chronology, or age of character, since parallels are often drawn between the young and

old.

 Twain strings unconscious hypocrisy through the novel, often in the virtuous, pious sense often

found in religion. In the opening chapter we meet the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss

Watson, who try to civilize Huckleberry after graciously taking him in, giving him clothes,

teaching him how to read and write, and making an effort to fix Huck's non-verbal

communication (i.e. posture) and trying to instill selective Christian values in him by relaying

scripture to Huck and having him participate in prayer. Making Huck believe in the benefits of

prayer fails, as Huck states,” Miss Watson . . . took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing

came of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't

so. I tried it" (Twain 11). To the understanding reader, the effort to proselytize Huckleberry is

discredited by either Miss Watson's misconception of the very scriptures and religious practices

she tries to instill in Huck, or her outright lie to deceive Huck and bring him into prayer by

promising that anything he desires will come true. Apart from Miss Watson's error in teaching

Christian values to Huck, on a surface level she would seem like a wholesome person, if it were

not for her ownership of slaves without any apparent qualms. When Huck states that," [T]hey

fetched the niggers in and had prayer”, Strange alarms are set off for the standard modern reader.

However in the south during slavery, people justified their ownership of another person, which

really makes them property as they were most commonly viewed, with flexible interpretation of

scripture and their supposed necessity (which was a manifestation of laziness) for slave labor. In

the context of the period of time released this book, it likely acted as a humorous part of the

novel for abolitionists and those who opposed slavery on a moral ground. This absurdity in

participating in Christian practices with the very same people they have enslaved and treated,

contrary to the gist of a famous scripture, unlike they would want to be treated, is equally as

startling when we meet the aunt and uncle of Tom Sawyer(Huckleberry’s impractical friend)

Sally and Silas. After Huck makes up a lie about an accident, Tom’s Aunt Sally asks feverously

if anyone was hurt Huck replies,” "No'm. Killed a nigger.", to which Aunt Sally retorts, “"Well,

it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt . . . last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming

up from Newrleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a

man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist” (Twain 249). Here we witness this

general backwardness in which religious people, especially the kind, seemingly good hearted

women in the novel, seems purposely placed at the beginning and end of the novel, perhaps to

show that Huckleberry has learned some valuable lessons in his travels to various towns along

the Mississippi, and does not want to endure the same feelings of discomfort in, to him,

unnecessarily complex situations. Compared to life on the raft, as Huckleberry describes it, “[T]

here warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but

a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft” (Twain 139). On the raft

he is free on confinement, as is Jim, who shares the comments with him. It is interesting to note

that Jim and Huckleberry share these sentiments, yet ultimately Jim wants to return to his family,

and Huck does not, because he never had a pleasurable relationship with any people in his family

and, after his father was noted as being dead has no one to return to. Mark Twain also highlights

contradictions in religious beliefs with individuals and behavior, most notably in the feud

between the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. Although both of these families indulge in the

ownership of slaves, the most bizarre component of their lifestyle is brought forth when Huck

describes the feuding families at church, who “brought their guns with them”.(Twain 128) In

later dialogue, we also find out that the two families are feuding yet no one knows why(Twain

129-130). The author here shows mindless obedience to tradition, and a religious hypocrisy

within the same group of people, hinting that the two characteristics run deep in southern culture.

 Apart from satirical plot points involving religious slave owners, we get to witness the

conniving schemes of the Duke and the Pauper, two conmen that Huck and Jim meet along the

raft and travel with. In Huck’s witnessing of the Duke and Paupers schemes(and the formers

sabotage of the latter) climaxing at the point in which Huckleberry decides to act upon his own

moral conviction, and sabotages the Duke and Pauper’s plans. He fails to escape confrontation

with the two conmen, giving him a valuable experience in the aftermath with those who have

strong disagreements with his actions (Twain 232-234). Throughout the novel the Duke and the

Pauper are painted in a bad light, but one should take the time to distinguish to two conmen

between other authoritative figures in the novel. These two men trick others into giving them

money and manipulate other humans in believing what they want, in a physically safe way. One

could almost conjecture that the Duke and the Pauper are similar to the other slave owners who

have manipulated people in s physically harmful way, keeping them as slaves, ultimately

controlling them with the threat of physical abuse or murder, along with their unaccepted and

dangerous solitude in the south.

After witnessing gut wrenching deceit, and gullibility, dehumanization of the friend he

found in Jim (and others like him, although he still objectifies Jim near the end of the novel,

comparing him to a “watermelon” and a “Sunday-school book” in the same breath [Twain 275]),

it is not surprising that huckleberry rejects civilization, saying he has to leave because,” Aunt

Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” The novel

seems to end pleasantly, with Huckleberry learning valuable lessons about the culture he lives

within, but it is important to question what lessons Huckleberry garners from his experiences

covered in the novel. It is in this last sentence that Mark Twain delivers his last portion of irony,

which he does so eloquently, because Huckleberry is leaving to “Indian Territory” with the very

person that epitomizes all that Huck could have found wrong during his travels, Tom Sawyer.

Tom is hypocritical, unapologetically manipulating and deceitful, pompous, and lacks critical

thinking faculties. In chapter 2, after Tom gathers a group of neighborhood boys to form a gang,

and makes the boys pledge secrecy to the group with their blood, he bribes the boy ”with 5 cents

to keep quiet” illegitimating the idea that the group is held together by trust(Twain 10). Moments

before Huck’s bribery, he shows how susceptible he is to believing written word is true. When

Ben Rogers, the boy in Tom’s gang whom Tom bribes, questions Tom with an alternative to

Tom’s proposed ransom process that he has set out for the gang, Sawyer retorts that it can’t be

done,”[B]ecause it ain’t in the books so –– that’s why”. Two chapters afterwards, Tom relays

aspects of Don Quixote, a novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, to Huckleberry with

conviction of its basis in reality. The chapter concludes with Huck, after testing the claims of

Tom sawyer about the outcomes of rubbing a lamp, Huck says ,”It warn’t no use, none of the

genies come. SO then I judged all that stuff was just … one of Tom sawyers lies. I reckoned he

believed in the Arabs and elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a

Sunday school” (Twain 15). This is all to telling of an overarching theme in the novel, which is

the credibility of religious beliefs. Huck’s test of Tom’s comments make more sense when we

compare it to his statement about receiving being so after trying it, and in light of sentences in

chapter 8 which he narrates, “Jim said bees wouldn’t sting idiots; but I didn’t believe that

because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn’t sting me”(Twain 47). Even in

fairness to the subjectivity of the word idiot, which in Twains writing it seems what Huck is

portrayed as(even if Huck claims he is not an idiot in the quote), Huck has a disbelief in certain

purported claims of other around him because he can test them. This is a way for Huck to wager

what is real and what is not, as he partakes in somewhat sloppy, rudimentary quasi science

experiments. By inserting multiple occurrences of Huck’s examination of claims, Mark Twain

likens the claims of prayer benefits to that of fictional writing in Don Quixote, and superstition

of enslaved African Americans. This is not surprising considering, that although he believed in

God, Twain did not believe in holy scriptures such as the Bible (Twain, Bainder, p. 56).

Tom is also portrays cruelty and ignorance that is comparable to that of the southern

adults in the novel. After Huck makes a reasonable objection to Tom’s plan to “save” Jim, Tom

says, “It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the right way ––and it’s the regular way.

And there ain't no OTHER way, that I heard of, and I’ve read all the books that gives any

information about these things” (Twain 273). For Twain, Tom is used to highlight the childlike

ignorance of religious southerners who claim that the all they know of is all there is, and all they

believe in is all there is to believe in. Tom also dismisses any level of foolishness in his beliefs

and plans, which Mark Twain arguably believes the religious southerners of his day did as well.

Tom’s cruelty is best highlighted in chapter 42, when he reveals that Jim has been free for two

months, undermining the seriousness in which Huckleberry has approached the situation of Jim’s

freedom with. Tom Sawyer has an impractical belief system that is susceptible to any set of

printed words he comes across, and unremorsefully manipulates others for his own adventurous

desires. So in this final sentence, one can see that while Huckleberry Finn consciously repels

socialization and the society he grew up in, he unconsciously plans to embark on a journey with

the very person who shows all the signs of manifesting into one of the very adults he wants to

avoid.