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Dilemmas In Huck Finn

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Some of Huck’s Many Dilemmas Throughout Adventures of Huckleberry Finn one thing is obvious, it is that Huck gets himself into a lot of difficult situations. They range from really bad to not so bad, but they all leave him with a hard choice. Huck finds a way out of them, whether that is lying, stealing, or running away. These lies lead to more and more lies; which make it harder to remember what the lie actually is. When Huck meets Mrs. Judith Loftus, he lies and tells her that his name is Sarah Williams, then Mary Williams, then George Peters. Huck continued lying, digging himself a deeper hole. All the situations he gets into have one thing in common, it is that they all can be easily prevented. As Huck goes on all of his adventures, he gets himself into tough situations, and once he gets out of one, he gets right back into another predicament and never successfully escapes any of them. …show more content…

This leads to more lies, including, Tom pretends to be his brother Sid. Unexpectedly, Tom decides to help Huck rescue Jim and Tom wants to preform it in a challenging way. Huck could have easily made the decision of telling Tom “no” and they could have rescued Jim in an easier way, but he kept quiet and Tom’s ideas get them into some trouble. Eventually, Aunt Polly arrived and told Aunt Sally that Tom and Huck are tricking her, and that Huck is not Tom and Tom is not Sid. Polly says “you mean where’s Huck Finn” (218), when Sally is referring to Huck as Tom. Sally is angered that Huck and Tom have been lying to her for so long. Huck’s lies once again

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Huck dislikes being with his father so he fakes his own death and runs off to meet Jim, who has also run away. The two go on adventures together down the Mississippi River. Huck and Jim encounter a steamship swarmed with murdering thieves and being taken in by a family which is eventually murdered. Jim then is taken away to a plantation. Huck is loyal enough to try and rescue Jim and they ride off into the sunset when Jim is freed of slavery.

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943 Words | 4 Pages

Often the reason for his misdeeds is virtuous. Huckleberry often risks his life and is loyal to his friends. Huckleberry Finn’s lie about his identity as a girl is transparent when he went back to his hometown after being proclaimed dead. Mrs. Judith Loftus catches Huckleberry forgetting his alias and advises, ”Well, try to remember it, George. Don’t forget and tell me it’s Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it’s George Elexander when I catch you.

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514 Words | 3 Pages

Huckleberry Finn’s most problematic lie was that he lies about his death because it frames Pap and Jim as his killer, it caused mourning for the Widow Douglas, and it led to Pap’s death. To begin with, because Huck faked his death, it framed Jim because it looked like he murdered Huck. If the lie was never told, it could have caused less stress and more safety for the runaway slave Jim. When Pap kidnaps Huck because he wasn’t giving him money, Huck escapes and fakes his own death so that Pap does not look for Huck. Since Jim runs away from his master that do for freedom it looks like Jim had killed Huck and ran away so that he would not be lynched.

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759 Words | 4 Pages

(p.20). Huckleberry Finn deceives his father because he knows the only reason why he wants the money is to buy liquor, get drunk and, beat Huck Finn. Another example of Huckleberry Finn lying to his father is when Pap asked Huck what is he doing with his gun. “ ‘What you doin with this gun?’ ‘… Somebody tried to get in,

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1424 Words | 6 Pages

That’s when the woman knew Huck was lying to her, so she notified him that she knew Huck’s a boy, and asked what his authentic name was. Huck lied once more, and told the woman to not make fun of an impecunious girl like him. The woman asked what happened to his family, and he told her that his “father and mother was dead, and the law bound him to a mean old farmer in the country” (Twain, 61). Huck’s motivation of doing this act was to see what others were thinking about what happened to Huck.

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424 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout Mark Twain’s book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck lies on many occasions and other characters lie to Huck. Jim lies to Huck when they find a dead man. Huck lies to a watchman when three men are in danger. Lastly, Huck also lies to the Shepherdsons when he gets caught. Usually, kids are taught to never lie, but in Huck’s case, it's the best thing to do.

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669 Words | 3 Pages

Huckleberry Finn’s third quality that would--in addition to his self-reliance and construction skills-- allow him to survive on a frontier is his cleverness. Cleverness pairs perfectly with survival in Huck’s situation. When Huck finally decided to leave his father's captivity, he devised a clever plan that made everyone think he was dead when he actually was not. His clever plan consisted of killing a hog and using its blood as his own, dragging large bags of flour through the dirt, and throwing pieces of his hair around the scene to make it look as if there was a struggle; with this plan he was able to fool everyone in his hometown into thinking he had been murdered. Not only did Huck fool his hometown, he also tricked several slave hunters into believing that he did not have a runaway slave at his campsite, yet he had an ill

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437 Words | 2 Pages

Huck uses this deception in order to escape his abusive father, Pap. which inevitably leads him to Jim, a slave that Huck lies to protect him. Huck and Jim are companions who look out for each other and Huck even lies to Jim, even if he is a slave. Huck lies by creating different disguises of made-up people. In chapter eleven, Huck disguises himself as a girl named Sarah Williams in order to get information.

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1475 Words | 6 Pages

Twain defends the positive aspects of lying and trickery through the means which Huck escapes from the cabin that he is trapped in with his father. Due to his father’s abusive nature, Huck feels the need to escape from his custody before his Pap returns from the town up river. He cuts a hole out of the cabin, leaves a trail of pig blood, makes it look like a robbery gone wrong, and leaves scents to divert the search dogs. Huck ends the endeavor by saying that “they won’t sift the river for anything but my dead carcass”(34). While this type of lying seems immoral without context, the abusive nature of Huck’s father makes the reader support and root for Huck to succeed.

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1090 Words | 5 Pages

Huck experienced this by pretending to be Tom Sawyer, which gave him time to stay on the Phelps’ plantation and free Jim. Before being able to free Jim with his impersonation skills, however, Huck was very unsuccessful in his ability to impersonate. In one case, Huck is looking for a home to stay in near the river and stumbles upon Mrs. Loftus. Huck tries to act like a girl around Mrs. Loftus in order to conceal his identity. Mrs. Loftus would expose him rather quickly after a series of tests that would prove his true identity.

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428 Words | 2 Pages

Morality of Lying in ‘Huckleberry Finn’ Everybody lies, So it is important to understand the moral nuances that surround lying. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a great book to look into the reasons people lie and their outcomes. Throughout the book many people lie, either to manipulate people for the liars benefit, to get information and hospitality, or to help other characters in the story.

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754 Words | 4 Pages

The book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, follows the life of a boy named Huckleberry Finn. Huck is what some would call an uncivilized child. In the book, Huck has to make several choices between right and wrong. Choosing between right and wrong is something that everyone has either experienced or will experience in his or her lifetime. A lot of thought goes into making a correct decision.

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1270 Words | 6 Pages

(115) Huck feels as though he should have been honest and turned Miss Sophia in, but he lied in order to protect her. Although Huck exemplifies honesty, there are some moments when he falls short of this image. Huck decides to fool Jim, taking advantage of his ignorance by lying to him, saying that he never left him on the river, it was only a wild illusion. After 15 minutes, Huck realizes his lie was wrong, leading him to apologize. Huck says, “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger, but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it

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1767 Words | 8 Pages

Once Huck met Widow Douglas, her Bible teachings is what possibly changed the morals behind his lies. Huck’s lies were always designed to save a life and to continue the adventures to freedom. As Twain

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1202 Words | 5 Pages

Huck thinks about Miss Watson and how he is betraying her by helping Jim escape. Huck encounters slave catchers and he is internally whether to tell about Jim but decides not to and says, “They went and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show -- when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat” (Twain 102). Then later in the novel Jim is sold by some con men for $40 which upsets Huck and causes him to realize he cares about Jim and says, “All right, then I’ll GO to hell” (Twain 225). Huck is defying society’s laws by deciding to help captured Jim. Huck is maturing significantly because his perception of Jim has changed.

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