Stopping the Repetition of the Past: Musings of Antebellum America

Stopping the Repetition of the Past Musings of Antebellum the States Author Henry James has tell that it takes a great quid of history to produce a little literature. For oer one hundred years sla truly had crippled the Afri wad the Statesn people and aided the uninfected man however, when the Emancipation resolve was put into effect it would set about a slow catalyst of flip that would take over a century for the complaisant compensates Movement to be at its pinnacle. Racial limits would be pushed, lasting tension would arise. A great American novel of this time should depict the questionable change in racial demographics of the unite States.Set before African American freedom, Adventures of huckleberry Finn, written by blot Twain has been incessantly praised by authors and critics of all(prenominal) levels for move boundaries. It needs to be placed in the context first of other American novels and thusly of world literature (Smiley 1). Much same(p) the American car riage of leaving the old country behind and immigrating to the United States, the novels loveable, young country boy of a narrator, huckabackleberry Finn, pulls in studyers of all kinds and recovers the loneliness of macrocosm on his own travelling in the south, save for his runaway slave friend Jim.Along their adventures up and down the Mississippi River to free Jim, the reader follows hucks moral nurture, which is built up during different episodes in the story, precisely ultimately undone in the end. Although the roundabout nature of the end of the novel and huckabacks moral regression has rendered distaste, Adventures of huckleberry Finn deserves its place in the literary canon of American literature for its variable structure, good-natured narrator, and reflections of Antebellum America. In essence, the end of huckleberry Finn is its pitfall.Hemingway claims that if you read the novel, that you must stop when Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. On e must go to where huck tells Tom of stealing Jim out of sla rattling, where it is evident that Tom withholds the knowledge that he knows that Jim has already been freed. What wherefore Jim is he begins to say, scarcely then stops talking before he reveals the facts (Twain 235). Tom Sawyer is too fanciful, too extravagant, making it eject that he is ultimately the endings drawback (Marx 10).It is clear that Tom Sawyer has begun planning his adventure al more or less immediately after finding out Jim was captured, and he takes advantage of his best friend huck. According to James Pearl the long and drawn out trick that Tom Sawyer plays on Jim requires the reader precariousness if any real development has taken place (2). After everything Huck does for Jim and the scrupulous opinions he forms, Tom accompanys back into the picture and pulls him back to his childish shenanigans. Huck allows his so called friend to take control of him, and the follower in him comes back out.He le ts Tom boss him around and does all that he can to entertain him Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you Id keep still thats what Id do (Twain 248). Tom acts as a nonher father figure to Huck an additional lousy, bully like character. The natural growth of Huck and Jims friendship, the pursuit of freedom and Hucks gradual recognition of the slaves humaneness ar rendered useless by the entrance of Tom Sawyer and his machinations to free Jim (Peaches 15). Not only is Tom Sawyer unrealistic, but he is alike charismatic and a natural leader, unfortunately in this case.At first, Huck questions Toms way of doing things Confound it, its foolish, Tom, but later he becomes Toms helpless accomplice, submissive and gullible (Twain 250, Marx 12). withal Jim, he couldnt guarantee no sense in the about of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him (Twain 256). Huck is the passive observer, who does not tell Tom what he is planning is wrong, and Jim is the submissive sufferer of them, who does not fight back (Eliot 3). Tom adds unneeded agitation to a swell up written, historically reflecting novel.At the very end when Tom wakes up, he is asked why he would want to set a freed slave free and responds Why, I wanted the adventure of it and Id a waded neck-deep in blood to-goodness alive, behaving as an immature imp (Twain 292). After all that Tom and Huck put Jim through, around sort of reaction from Jim and a well-deserved outburst from Huck atomic number 18 expect however, the actual response is quite the antithesis of what is expected. Huck still puts the menace on a pedestal, believing that Tom Sawyer had done and took all that trouble and flurry to set a free nigger free (292).Jim does not even question Toms motives. When freed, Jim receives forty dollars from Tom, and the newly freed man claims in unrest Dah, how, Huck, what I tell youI tole you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter be rich agin, en its come true (294). While most of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not convincing, the ending surpasses the realm of improbability into ridiculousness. Leo Marx declares the most obvious thing wrong with the ending, then, is the flimsy contrivance by which Clemens frees Jim, which goes to say that although the ending is very humorous, it is quite agitating (9).This novel is a masterpiece because it brings Western humor to perfection and yet transcends the narrow limit of it conventions. But the ending does not (Marx 11). No matter how stirring the conclusion of the book is, thither is still an insightful segment. During the attempted freeing of Jim, Each shackle, chain, and discomfort applied by the boys to Jim makes Twains point that freeing a free black man in the postbellum is protracted and difficult (Godden, Mccay 11).Even after the civilian War ends and the Emancipation Proclamation is still in place, the actual freedom of African American men and women is not in attained. These oppressed people still live under the rein of a struggling, racially suppressive nation. A century after this period freedom is fought for again, yet won day by day. Just when the reader believes that some hope has arisen, Huck lights out for the territory unspoiled like he lights out from every other situation.Aunt Sally is going to adopt him and sivilize him and he cant stand it, and thats the end (Twain 296). No more to leave the reader thinking about how the narrator has developed immensely or how frequently struggle he has gone through, James Pearl has to ask whether Huckleberry Finn goes in a line, or a circle (1). Almost as soon as the reader opens the novel, which Hemingway has noted that There was nothing beforeThere has been nothing good since, an explanatory written by Mark Twain is seen.It is written that In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit the Missouri negro dialect the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect, as well as the use of numerous more speech patterns tha t suck up not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work but pains-takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity (Twain Explanatory). Right collide with the bat Twain establishes respectable ethos or credibility, which lays the framework of language in the novel. As its characters speak throughout the book, it is easy to differentiate between the change dialects that are used.Jim is a prime example of Twains pains-takingly written dialect, I tuck out en shin down de hill en spec to steal a skift long de sho someers bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirren yit, so I hid (55). To the modern day reader this is difficult language to become adept to reading, but it is reiterate easy to see that it is exquisitely written. Twain creates the impression of the American folk refinement through his use of dialect and phonetic spelling, which mimics speech, rather than writing (Pearl 1).Even though many of the adventures are improbable, the cred ibility of the characters in them are made more convincing by mimicking this native mother tongue The use of the word nigger in the novel creates a sense of fury in countless Americans. Henry Peaches mentions Fiedler when stating that the racial-slur has the odious distinction of signifying all the shame, the frustration, the rage, the business that has been so much a part of the history of race relations in the United States (Peaches 12).However, Peaches and Fiedler do not put into account the culture in which Huckleberry was raised. Twain uses language to show that access to culture and education defines character (Pearl 1). Huck was raised in the South during the 1800s, before the emancipation of slaves, so by nature he and many others in the novel would use the word without an afterthought. All of the negative racial undertones used by Huck are not apparently the thoughts of a young boy, they are reflections of Twain.This is expressed during the King Solomon chapter, where H uck claims that Jim had an uncommon level head, for a nigger (Twain 86). As chapter fourteen unfolds, the question of equality of the American people comes into play. The debate about the Americanness of Huckleberry Finn reveals the larger struggle to define American identity (Pearl 1). This book came at a time after the slaves in the United States were freed, but it is based before that. It was a time when Americans needed to contemplate their countrys history, and define for themselves the difference between repair and wrong.When Jim cannot seem to visit why French men and American men do not speak the same language, Twain is inferring that all men should be equal, merely because they are men. Whenever the mix of the Ohio River and the Mississippi River is mentioned, there is a sense of pressure and divided pride. Those who live on the Mississippi River feel their Southern pride, The Child of Calamitysaid there was nutritiousness in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi wate r could grow corn in his stomach if he wanted to (Twain 101).Although this quote seems very silly, it brings to light the foolish, yet very real northern and southern rivalry Northerners and Southerners had differing opinions about slavery and human rights, they talked about how Ohio water didnt like to mix with Mississippi water (101). Richard Godden and Mary Mccay point out that Twain locates this conversation very specifically that the intersection is political as well as geographical (10). Later on in chapter twenty-two Huck goes to another town where a lynch mob goes after Sherburn. Sherburn may have just shot a harmless drunkard, but his speech is eloquent.What comes out of the communicative man is an expression from Twain based upon Southern antics Why, a mans safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind as long as its daylight and youre not behind himWhy dont your juries hang murderersyoure afraid to back down afraid youll be found out for what you are cowards (Twain 16 2). Twain makes clear at one time more the way he feels about the south. This town, much like the south had to be moving back, and back, and back, it was still caught in its old ways, unjust and antiquated (156).Even Huck speaks to this because the people thats always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that haint done just right is always the very ones that aint the most anxious to pay for him when theyve got their satisfaction out of him, meaning that those who take advantage of others are raved up to use them but do not want to make an effort to pay the repurcusions of it (288). When Huck speaks there is no exaggeration of grammar or spelling or speech, there is no condemn or phrase to destroy the illusion that these are Hucks own words (Eliot 3).The use of a child narrator in this vista is key. Humans have a predisposed inclination to care for young children, and these jaded, insightful words that come from Huck evoke a deeper sense in the reader. Coming from a child, these words have a stronger sense of meaning. The language and sentence structure that Twain uses for his characters goes hand in hand with the often supernormal juxtaposition he often forms. One night his pap was all tired outhe said he would rest a minute and then kill me (Twain 41).This subtly included sentence adds immense effect The predominant use of simple sentence syntax which allow(s) him to handle the surfaces of the world as they come at him, or to watch and record others doing likewise (Godden, Mccay 12). There is neither judgment nor alarm in his tone. When Twain constructs sentences in this way it catches the reader off guard and creates a realization of the cruelty of the world that Huck has become so adjusted to. Choosing right from wrong seems impossible when the person that taught him to delineate right from wrong was a morally clouded father.This is exemplified again during the Grangerford episode when Huck starts out describing Colonel Grangerford, He was kind as he c ould beEverybody loved to have him around too he was sunshine most always and then continues with the unexpected fact that the old gentleman owned a jam of farms, and over a hundred niggers (Twain 125, 126). This is ironic due to the contrast between Hucks romanticized view of the lovely Colonel Grangerford and the readers understanding that the man inhumanely owns over a hundred cosmoss.Huck has a basic, yet growing understanding of how slavery is cruel, but not enough to equate slave owners as unjust people. Then when the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons go to church with their guns and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall, Huck includes then that It was pretty ornery preaching all about brotherly love, as if the situation was not ironic nor strange in any way (129). The juxtaposition included in this statement as well as the irony exemplifies Twains opinion of the ridiculousness of age old vendettas and family rivalries in the South.After everyth ing they leave church with a powerful lot to say about faith and the good works, which exacerbates the foolishness of the feud, they speak of faith, but try to kill of their enemies every chance they get (129). Twains opinions are not kept out of his book, but are hidden in some cases. They have created such a lasting legacy for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The authors opinions and a wide variety of characters enable the reader to have a wider viewpoint of the people in this period of history. Following the Sherburn incident, Huck goes to the circus.He does not transition whatsoever, I could a staid (at Sherburns), if Id a wanted to, but I didnt want to. I went to the circus, and loafed around (162). This explosive change happens a few times throughout the novel to help illustrate the extent of Hucks age and lack of capability to butt life altering situations, such as the death of his dear friend Buck, which symbolizes the death of the boys childhood. He immediately goes back t o the raft, We said there warnt no home like a raft, and continues back on his adventures with Jim (134).This action leaves room for endless variation and adventures, with the endless variation of Americas inha spotlightants (Pearl 1). The reader is never really sure what to expect next in the novel, which leaves room for prediction. The seemingly random episodes are expertly crafted to show Hucks moral development. America at the time is a big melting pot of different cultures, which come into play with shaping the narrator. Beginning in the first few pages of the novel, the reader gets their first taste of Huck as a narrator. He is goodhearted, and does not judge, which makes him an unbiased storyteller.Beginning with speaking about the author, Mark Twain, Huck says that he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth (Twain 13). Even when referring to his father who abuses him he does not see the wickedness in him, but by and by pap go t too handy with his hickry and I couldnt stand it. I was all over welts (37). By being an impartial narrator he allows the reader to make his own moral reflectionsHe is the impassive observer he does not interferehe does not judge (Eliot 2).T. S. Eliot is spot on when he says this. By being an impassive observer, the reader then takes Hucks later moral development more seriously. During the Grangerford episode he learned that unique Emmeline Grangerford made poetry about people who had died and felt unsuitable because no one wanted to make poetry about her once she died so he tried to sweat out a verse or two himself, just because he felt that bad for a girl he had never met (Twain 124). This type of mature sincerity is uncommon among preadolescent boys.The development of Hucks conscience comes a bit later in the novel, however the start of his moral growth begins before this. As soon as Huck and Jim meet again on the island Huck breaks norms of the time, and he chooses not to tur n Jim in. I said I wouldnt tell, and Ill stick to it. Honest injun I will, and he even claims that he does not care if People call him a low down Abilitionist (55). Although this scene is early in the novel it essentially sets the scene for the rest of the Hucks progress, excluding the ending.Hucks immediate reaction to help his newfound friend, whom he would be incomplete without, before he becomes well acquainted with him is an persistent moment in the American experience, and proves his heart is in the right place (Eliot 3, Marx). When he plays a mean, childish trick on Jim, who was once his slave, he apologizes It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger, and even when he apologized he warnt ever forbidding for it afterwards (Twain 95). T. S. Eliot claims that the pathos and dignity of a boy, when reminded so humbly and humiliatingly, that his position in the world is not that of other boys, entitled from time to time a practical jo ke but that he must bear, and bear alone, the responsibility of a man (4). Huck must reason for himself right versus wrong, and act as an adult, even though the role models he has had in his life have consisted of an alcoholic father and foster parents who try to sivilize him (13). This is where he realizes that he needs to do right from there on forward.He would not do him no more mean tricks and he wouldnt done that one if hed a knowed it would make him feel that way (95). Huck learns that Jim has real feelings, recognizes humanity, and vows not to play any more tricks on him, which is Hucks first big step in moral development (Pearl 2). However, after this big step, when Jim and he came close to Cairo, Huck becomes nervous. He realizes what he is doing is wrong in societys terms. It made him feel all over trembly and feverish, this is his conscience playing a role in his life decisions for once.Sacvan Bercovitch believes Hucks desire to fit in is underscored by his inability to d o soHe believes in racism, class hierarchy, Southern aristocracy, which is completely inaccurate (14). Huck tries to believe in these things because society has forced him to believe in them, but he is questioning what he has been taught The situation got to troubling him so he couldnt rest, then he got to feeling so mean and so lowly he wished he was dead (Twain 110). He couldnt get that out of his conscience, no how nor way (110). Stealing that poor old-womans slave scorched him more and more (110).Huck has vision for the first time in his life that society may not be right and decides that he would do whatever comes handiest at the time, and not what is necessarily right (Eliot 2, Twain 113). When contemplating turning his friend in, he got to thinking over their trip down the river, and that while they were floating along they talked and sang and laughed (222). This leads to Hucks decision that he will go to hell if that is what it takes (223). Leo Marx believes that this is th e climactic moment in the ripening of his self-knowledge. By stating he will go to Hell, Huck has surrendered to the notion of a principle of right and wrong (Cox 190). His friend Jim is his father figure and the power of Jims personality erodes the prejudices that Hucks culture has instilled (Peaches 14). When Henry Peaches states that Hucks attitudes extend no further than his love for Jim, it is not necessarily true (13). Huck does love Jim, he has become a surrogate father to Huck, and he immediately agrees to help Jim as soon as he finds out on the island that Jim is a runaway (Peaches 16).He also claims that there is no literal reason to assume that the regard Huck acquires for Jim during his odyssey down the river is generalized to encompass all blacks (Peaches 12, 13). Peaches is correct that there is no tangible evidence, but just because Huck saves Jim as opposed to some other runaway slave does not make his motives any less genuine. While the ending of Adventures of Huck leberry Finn arguably is its drawback, the capricious structure and language, delightful narrator, and observations of prewar United States unquestionably give the novel its place in the literary canon of American literature. one time it is accepted that the last twelve chapters of the book are disappointing, it is easy to see the merit in the rest of the piece. Depicting the feelings of southern citizens and African Americans before the Civil War, it gives a glimpse into the past of a torn country. The legacy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will last for many years to come because of the profound impact that is had upon both America and other nations. Mark Twains writing has exposed the wrongdoing of slavery to the American people.By writing the novel after the Civil War, he has forced the country to look back in shame on the disturbing act of slavery and to fight for the cause of equality. It will live on because it is a book for everyone. Subtly including dark images with satir e offers many interpretations, therefore giving a book that younger children can read and not see more than a story, and mature readers can look at with a deeper understanding. By looking into the past, one can help stop the repetition of monstrous acts in the future.