Huck Finn Post #3

When Huck and Jim get split up from the raft, Huck gets introduced to the Grangerfords. The Grangerfords are quick to welcome Huck into their home since they now know he is not a Shepherdson. The Grangerfords lifestyle and large estate with over one hundred slaves and lavishness bewilders him for he has never been introduced to this way of living. There is a major amount  of humor in Huck’s view of the lavish lifestyle and stylish house the Grangerfords have. It can be seen as almost cheep and humorous. Twain satires the family feuds and the mourning during the Victorian Age. The Grangerords have a deceased daughter, Emmeline, that Twain satires in the mocking of the dark and depressing feelings the Victorian Age emits with her obscure obsession for the dead. Twain mocks the idea of family fights when he writes about the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud. Huck realizes that the families don’t even know the reason why this never ending feud is still going on, “The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdson’s done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love…” (Twain 111). This shows the stupidity the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons have in the idea of maintaining family honor even though they do not even know what they need this honor for. The families bring guns to church sermons preaching of brotherly love even though no one in the church knows what the need for the guns is. In a way Twain is making fun of family honor and how ridiculous and life controlling it will become.

With the comical aspects to the Grangerfords there are also some more somber  and melancholy trials. Twain satires the Victorian Age through Emmeline in whom he expresses loss with her death. Although she is dead and has been for quite some time her family still makes an effort to maintain her room, and keeps all of her poems and art to remember her by, as any family would but the Grangerfords take their grieving to a whole new level. Twain’s mocking of the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud takes a more serious level when Buck, Huck’s new and only friend besides Jim, dies in a gunfight. As he is covering his new found friends fragile face Huck says, “I cried a little when I was covering up Buck’s face, for he was mighty good to me” (Twain 117). The family feud was first seen as humorous but the result was tragic for both Huck and the Grangerfords. The deaths in the fight consisted of Buck, his father and two brothers were killed by the Shepherdson’s to keep their sense of family pride. The tragedies of all of those lives ending showed the true sadness that the Grangerfords felt within the feud.

The Grangerfords are a direct allusion to William Shakespeare’s famous play “Romeo and Juliet.” The Grangerford-Shepherdson feud is a direct correlation to Romeo and Juliet and the feud between the Capulets and Montagues. Both fights are tragic in the end and unreasonable and pointless. In both stories each family is trying show a sense of family honor which will always result in tragic and mostly deadly endings. The Capulet-Montague relationship in Romeo and Juliet is similar to the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons in the essence that they are both powerful families that are at each others wits end from annoyances that took place long ago. Huck even asks what the fighting is about and Buck replies, “Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don’t know now what the row was about in the first place” (Twain 110). This is a major point in showing the pure stupidity that all four of the families share by not even knowing what they were fighting about. Twain tries to show the pointlessness of family feuds through the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons just as Shakespeare did through the Capulets and Montagues.

Huck Fin Post #2

Huck and Jim have a bond that usually only close family members feel towards each other. Jim’s concern for Huck is shown by him worrying like a nervous mother or father after he thought he had disappeared in the fog, “when I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’… en when I wake up en find you back ag’in, all safe end soun’, de tears come, en I coul ‘a’ got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot” (Twain 89).It shows how strongly Jim feels about Huck and how he treats Huck as if he were Hick's father. He cares so deeply for Huck that his emotions when he thought something had happened to Huck could almost be felt through Twain's writing. Huck's feelings are similar to Jim's but in a child's mannerisms. In response to Jim’s outburst his prank, Huck acted in a way any child would. He said things that he did not mean but sounded good verbalized in an argument. Afterwards however, he acted immensely sorry, and even pondered the notion, “It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back” (89). Both Huck and Jim act like they are in any normal father-son relationship, Jim in the paternal and Huck in the child’s position, although in some ways the opposite occurs when Huck sometimes acts paternal to Jim.

                Huck has some fatherly habits when it come to Jim. He tries to teach him and educate him on knowledge that Huck feels is just common sense. He protect him like a father would to any of his children. When the men on the boat want to go and make sure Jim isn’t a runaway slave so that they can turn him in, and Huck creates a story about his family being ill. Huck makes sure Jim remains safe no matter what the risk. He attempts to teach him stories and random facts he has picked up on the course of his adventures. “So I went talking about other kings… I told him about Louis the sixteenth that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would ‘a’ been king , but they took and shut him up in a jail, and some say he died there” (82). This embellishes the father-son bind Jim and Huck share. Huck cares immensely for Jim and Jim in turn cares just as much about Huck, both in a way almost like a parent loves its child. They share an unconditional love that can never seem to be broken. Jim is worried about Huck while Huck tries to protect Jim and in return they end up saving each other from themselves.

Huck Finn Post #1

Throughout the first ten chapters of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck's personality is immediately shown through the text. Huckleberry Finn was not raised in a way most normal children are. With no mother or father and the fact that he has to live with a widow and her sister, he can seem like a rebellious boy in certain situations. He is not as uncontrollable and ignorant as it he is made out to be; certain people in his life influence him, such as his best friend Tom Sawyer. Huck has almost no responsibilities and that allows him to be a person who acts based on what he observes. The widow tries to educate Huck and to somehow make him more respectable. "Then I set down...tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead" (Twain 13). Although Huck is surrounded by people he always feels lonesome and never excepted. When he is with his father, he is forced to act la certain way, be illiterate, and just take whatever his father criticizes or beats him down with. He is forced to live his life in many different lifestyles and that is shown through his personality and by people are trying to shape him into a different person, but for the most part, all he wants is to feel some sort of acceptance.

In the beginning of the novel, Huck tries to act like a tough, stubborn, and difficult boy. Him and Tom Sawyer try to succeed on their life of crime that was mentioned in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. As the story continues, it is shown that Huck is actually an innocent and emotional person who doesn't know what he is trying to succeed in. "All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular" (12). Huck puts on the impression that he knows what he is doing and that he knows what he wants in his life, but in reality his ideas and dreams are just figments that other people have put in his head then actual wants of his own. His determination to leave the people who are trying to change him, Huck fakes his own death and leaves for Jackson's Island. This represents his cleverness and intelligence. After leaving a life of desperation and being on his own, all of these traits form a freedom loving, intelligent, and strong kid who cherishes freedom more then life itself. "...the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all about it..." (46). Huckleberry Finn is an amazing literary character that seems to establish a new view on himself every chapter.