Society comes with a set of rules and
responsibilities expected to be followed by its citizens/members. The time
period in which Huck’s story takes place was a time where laws were not as “strict”
and where disciplining your child was actually considered punishing them, and
not abuse. However, even back in Huck’s day there were responsibilities and
expectations people had for one and other. Huck’s father is a drunken, abusive
man who has completely failed his society, in general he just is not
responsible, and more specifically he cannot even assume the role of actually being
a father. Due to this, Huck runs away to live a life on the Mississippi. While doing
so he meet a run-away slave named Jim, a character Huck will soon become very
close with, and who will actually take on a father-like role for Huck. Anyway,
the point is that while running away together, Huck will have random moments in
which he doubts his responsibility to society. This a time period in which
slavery is still a way of life and after all Jim is a run-away slave, so Huck feels
like he owes it his society to turn Jim in. For example, in chapter sixteen
there is a part where men want to board Huck’s raft to search for escaped slaves,
after immediately denying it to the men he thinks to himself, “…I got aboard
the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong…”(Twain
113) Huck feels bad for lying to protect Jim, but then realizes he would feel
bad for turning in his friend just because the law says so. At this point in
the novel Huck is still learning right from wrong and faces this internal
struggle.
3 comments:
I liked how you mentioned Pap's complete lack of social responsibility because I hadn't really connected those things. I also didn't really think about how by entering this journey with Jim he's learning what it's really like to have a father-someone who will take care of you no matter what and will always believe in you. For most people, Huck's adventure would be a unique experience due to the aspect of being cut off from society and having to depend on oneself. But for Huck, the thing that's different is having a single person who cares so much about him in the first place.
WHADDUP!!! I think the fact that Huck decides to not turn Jim in is a prime example of how different Huck is compared to everyone else in his time. He does not care about his 'responsibility to society'. He cares much more about his responsibility to his friends. I mean even when it came to being with Tom, Huck was always about making sure his friendship was okay rather than any trouble they were going to get into. It's almost as if Huck is from a different time period, a time like today where people don't really care about what society wants them to do as much as they care about what is right for them
In your blog you show how this theme of “social responsibility” can be so difficult since what you are supposed to do by law is not always the right thing to do. Huck deciding between turning Jim in or not is a total dilemma. He has to decide between following the law which is his responsibility for being white or saving his friend which would be more of a moral responsibility. It was a very tough decision that Huck had to make. He knew that not turning Jim in was wrong by law and that he would have felt guilty if he didn’t do it, but he would have felt even worse if he had done it. Jim was his friend, he passed through difficult situations with Huck and took care of him all the time that they were together. It would’ve been heartless of Huck to turn Jim in.
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