aDave Pelzer, autobiographer and victim of child abuse, once said, “Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.” Unfortunately for Huckleberry Finn, it is the latter. His father is an abusive alcoholic who is unable to provide for Huck, as all of his money goes straight to purchasing liquor. He kidnaps Huck from Widow Douglass, who taught him proper etiquette, and takes him to live in a run-down shack near the river. Here, he is completely sheltered from anything his father did not have—religious knowledge, education, and the expectation of good manners. This reveals the father’s jealousy, as he does not want his son to be more cultured and successful than he. Huck does not seem to mind
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However, the moment Huck’s life is in peril, his opinion of living with his dad takes a turn. One night, his father comes home so incredibly drunk, that he “[chases Huck] round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling [him] the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill [him]” (32). This exposes that Huck’s dad is evil and cruel: he would kill his own son because his life is utterly miserable and somehow feels like Huck is rubbing that in and acting superior with his civilized upbringing. This inferiority complex functions as an instigator of violence.
Pranks are often seemingly harmless, but they can easily be taken too far. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, young Huck plays a practical joke on Jim, his friend and the runaway slave, …show more content…
When Jim, a runaway slave, is locked in a hut at Tom’s aunt’s house, Tom and Huck are determined to help him escape, but not without a few obstacles that Tom throws in the way. With his mind set on making Jim’s prison experience as genuine as possible, Tom takes Huck into village to gather a “splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars” (295) to place in Jim’s hut so that he has to live with an infestation of the nasty pests. The whole process is completely unnecessary; Tom is making life harder for Jim when he really did nothing to deserve it. However, it exhibits how stubborn Tom is because he refuses to take shortcuts on his adventures. This is a prime example of naïve cruelty because Tom is simply a young boy who mimics the stars of adventure books, and he does not consider the unsanitary, unsafe, and cruel reality of the scenario. It also reveals Jim’s good nature. He complains about the vermin surely, but even when Tom refuses to get rid of it, he deals with it and has no intention of getting revenge. Overall, Tom, like much of society, is a stickler for tradition and authenticity which leads him to ignore Jim’s feelings and brush aside the cruelty of the
However, the moment Huck’s life is in peril, his opinion of living with his dad takes a turn. One night, his father comes home so incredibly drunk, that he “[chases Huck] round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling [him] the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill [him]” (32). This exposes that Huck’s dad is evil and cruel: he would kill his own son because his life is utterly miserable and somehow feels like Huck is rubbing that in and acting superior with his civilized upbringing. This inferiority complex functions as an instigator of violence.
Pranks are often seemingly harmless, but they can easily be taken too far. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, young Huck plays a practical joke on Jim, his friend and the runaway slave, …show more content…
When Jim, a runaway slave, is locked in a hut at Tom’s aunt’s house, Tom and Huck are determined to help him escape, but not without a few obstacles that Tom throws in the way. With his mind set on making Jim’s prison experience as genuine as possible, Tom takes Huck into village to gather a “splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars” (295) to place in Jim’s hut so that he has to live with an infestation of the nasty pests. The whole process is completely unnecessary; Tom is making life harder for Jim when he really did nothing to deserve it. However, it exhibits how stubborn Tom is because he refuses to take shortcuts on his adventures. This is a prime example of naïve cruelty because Tom is simply a young boy who mimics the stars of adventure books, and he does not consider the unsanitary, unsafe, and cruel reality of the scenario. It also reveals Jim’s good nature. He complains about the vermin surely, but even when Tom refuses to get rid of it, he deals with it and has no intention of getting revenge. Overall, Tom, like much of society, is a stickler for tradition and authenticity which leads him to ignore Jim’s feelings and brush aside the cruelty of the