Huckleberry Finn Essay #3

Riddhi Jain

AP English: Mr. George

25 August 2009

Huckleberry Finn Essay

Journey Through Society

Children walking barefoot through the woods, blacks forced into labor by their white masters, and gunshots flying past house windows. Racism, poverty, and violence were some of the main principles of the mid-1800s Southern society. Huckleberry Finn faced an internal conflict between the civilized and barbaric choices life offered him. Huck stood clear of making a choice by setting on a journey down the river. He discovered the pros and cons of life and learned right from wrong through his experiences. The societal critique of the antebellum south is seen through the eyes of Huckleberry Finn as he travels down the river.

Black people were not considered human beings in the South. They were known better as the cotton picking, cow feeding illiterates of the white society. If a black man was wearing a nice pair of shoes or a clean-cut shirt, then all hell broke loose. A black person was to never reach the standards of a white person: "When they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. […] I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?" (Twain 37). Pap was not at all satisfied to see a black man wealthier and better off than himself. It was outrageous for him to learn that black people were free for six months before they were sold as slaves. People refused to understand that black people were equally congenial to white people.

Aside from color, the white society of the South never managed to grasp the fact that black people also had feelings just like the whites did. Miss. Watson had promised Jim that she would not sell him to New Orleans, but Jim overheard her conversation with the slave trader: "I hear ole missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans. [...] She could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz such a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'" (54). Miss. Watson made a promise to Jim and broke it. Jim trusted her when she said she would never sell him to New Orleans. She broke that trust when she accepted the slave trader’s offer. If Miss. Watson felt that Jim had satisfied her standards of a human being, she would not have treated Jim as an object and allowed money to manipulate her mind. In the Southern society, a person would do anything for their best interest. This included betraying a devoted slave, or abusing their child in order to acquire enough money to benefit them, just like Pap did to Huck.

Huck Finn dehumanized Jim after he tried to explain that a Frenchman was a man. He was getting fed up with Jim and did not bother continuing the conversation: "I see it warn't no use wasting words--you can't learn a nigger to argue" (92). Huck did not want to bother helping Jim understand what he was trying to say. He settled with the Southern stereotype of a black person that Jim was an imbecile. Huck also thought he could get away with tricking Jim into thinking he had dreamed Huck was away from their raft. Jim was no fool and confronted Huck that he was lying: "When I wake up en fine you back agin’, all safe en soun’, de tears come en I could a got down on my knees en kiss’ yo’ foot I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinking ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie" (98). Jim was hurt by Huck's prank. He had been worried about Huck and to find his friend making fun of him hurt his feelings. Huck would not have pulled a foolish trick like that on any white friend of his like Tom Sawyer, yet he thought it was amusing to get a laugh out of Jim’s fluster. Huck, like the rest of Southern society, thought blacks were susceptible who no common sense. Clearly, that was a false assumption.

As Huck continued his journey down the river, he came across two families with a strangely aggressive desire to end each others lives. The Grangerford and the Shepardson family shared an unyielding hatred for one another without a valid reason: "They don't know, now, what the row was about in the first place" (120). All the families wanted were for the other to be killed and gone for good. In Southern society, this warfare and death was accepted. The death of Buck, a mere thirteen years old, died trying to save his family. Nobody had any objections for this innocent child's death. A grown man had no problem shooting this boy and leaving him lying on the ground to bleed. There was no shame in these feudal deeds that were committed in the South. It was all accepted.

Colonel Sherburn shot the drunken Boggs for his disruption in front of the whole town. After he walked away satisfied, the town rallied up together to lynch Sherburn for his foolish act. The violence that was represented on the angry faces of the people showed the mannerism of typical Southern standards. By rallying together brought the town courage to fight Sherburn. He was not afraid of this mob and shot down the confidence each member of it had built up: “The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is- a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass” (159). Throughout the South, families fought side by side to put an end to a dispute. They rallied themselves together with pride and courage, but forgot the logic behind the decision they made to fight. Instead of settling issues with reasoning and fair judgment, the families of the South always resorted to violence.

Throughout the novel, violence was the resolution to all problems the Southern society of the mid-1800s faced. Children carried guns and knives as protection. It was common to see shooting outside a person's house. The influence of the Southern society showed a lack of education, poverty, and corruption of the youth. Blacks had no voice or opinion. Boys were not interested in their studies and girls were to cook and clean at home. Living through the ups and downs of society, Huck Finn and Jim both found their place without being affected by the corruption surrounding them. Through their experiences, Huck and Jim both learned life lessons and how to become better people. It strengthened their confidence and courage to take on anything that crossed their path. Huck Finn ended his journey down the river, yet he started a new one with an unbiased perspective of the world around him.

The Great Gatsby Essay #2

Riddhi Jain

AP English: Mr. George

27 July 2009

The Great Gatsby Essay

One of a Kind

When one strives to achieve a certain goal, any sense of pessimism results into an automatic failure. This brings us down until we have no hope or determination to achieve our goals. An apathetic person is easily driven to walk away from something unaccomplished. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby broke the pessimistic attitude that lingers in society. He did not allow the hardships he faced to discourage him or give him anything less than hope. Gatsby fought for what he wanted the most without allowing himself to become repressed. He strongly believed in himself and the person he cared about the most. Through all the difficult situations this man faced, he never gave up hope. Gatsby stepped out of the boundaries of an incompetent, disheartened person in society and fought for what he longed for.

After several years of being a poor soldier at war, Jay Gatsby never stopped loving Daisy. He began living in a fantasy world assuming Daisy would be waiting for him: “Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (78). Gatsby failed to realize that a wealthy, young woman could not be waiting for a fortuneless beau for the rest of her life. Gatsby strongly believed Daisy would fall into his arms after meeting with the newly improved Jay Gatsby. He refused to understand that she had already started a family and was living a pleasant life without him. He had not given up hope from the day he left her that they would be together. Gatsby did not walk away hanging his head down when he heard Daisy was married and had a child. He only tried harder to win her back.

Gatsby could not convince himself to believe Daisy was in love with Tom and was completely over the relationship that she had with Gatsby. After one meeting, Daisy’s feelings for Gatsby returned, but at the end of the story, she chose to be with Tom. Daisy was simply infatuated by the man she once loved, but Gatsby was convinced otherwise: “She never loved you, do you hear? She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!” (130). Gatsby put his foot down in confidence that Daisy was in love with him, not Tom. He was positive that Daisy supposedly loved Tom only as an appeasement for her true lost love. If this was so, and Daisy truly loved Gatsby, she would have divorced Tom with no hesitation or at least come to Gatsby’s funeral. To Daisy, Gatsby was just another man she had loved. Gatsby managed to keep such a strong faith about his relationship with Daisy that he could not bear to view the situation in a realistic point of view. It would be inappropriate and simply wrong to leave her husband and child for a man she had a fling with as a young woman. Gatsby was not discouraged by the fact that Daisy already settled down and made her life. With all his efforts, he continued to try to win her love back.

When all odds were against him, Gatsby never left his optimistic attitude. He was drowning in love for Daisy to the point where he even admitted his love for her to Tom: “Once in awhile I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and, in my heart I love her all the time” (131). Gatsby felt ashamed for some of the foolish acts he committed, but he expressed through his statements that no matter how imprudent his acts were, he still felt the same way he did when he first met Daisy. Gatsby was fearless. His overwhelmingly love for Daisy spoke to everybody in the room. Gatsby was willing to fight for Daisy. He was neither afraid nor intimidated by Tom. Gatsby said what he felt in his heart and did not let anything stop him. He did not let Tom’s anger and arrogance bring him down from what he loved the most.

Jay Gatsby was unsure how he wanted to approach Daisy after all the years he had been living in West Egg, but he never believed all hope was lost. He tried with all his power to rekindle the flame that once lit between them, but it was simply too late. If Gatsby was still in Daisy’s life and had not gone off to war, then there might have been a chance that he could have married her. After coming back from a dreadful war, Gatsby looked on the bright side and sought to find Daisy again. He waited patiently for five years before making an approach to meet her. Instead of walking away from the illusion painted before him that Daisy would come back to him, Gatsby never stopped believing in what they once had together.

Gatsby was a martyr for his love. He took the blame when Daisy hit Myrtle, and waited outside Daisy’s house that night to make sure she was okay. Gatsby was madly in love with her: “I want to wait here until Daisy goes to bed” (145). He became a wealthy man holding extravagant parties for strangers. Gatsby was the man people passed judgments about without even knowing him. All he wanted was Daisy’s love, not the gossip, the big name, and expensive items. Gatsby only acquired such fortunes to bring Daisy back to him, so that she could see how prosperous her poor lover turned into after all the years they were away from one another. Gatsby looked to the future he had waited so long to have with Daisy, the future of living happily ever after with no worries. On the inside, Gatsby was a simple man that wanted nothing more than what other men want in life. He kept his head up and did everything he could to win back Daisy and prove to her that he truly was the man of her dreams. In the end, Gatsby was not able to win his lover, but he had a strong heart to fight for her through the winding struggles he faced with Tom and himself.