Huck’s Moral Struggles
“The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between good and the lesser good.” This quote from Barbara Grizzuti Harrison explains every struggle that Mark Twain’s mischievous character Huck Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn goes through daily in his young life while living in a judgemental society. The moral dilemmas that Huck faces tear him apart. He is constantly caught between what he thinks is right and what society says is right. Huck battles with his conscience throughout the novel, as what is right starts to reveal itself to Huck, who is breaking the chains that bind him. Huck has many moral struggles with society’s rules and with his own heart, but he overcomes these struggles and finds who he truly is. Throughout the story Huck has such a
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“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”(214). Huck says this after he rips apart a letter that he was going to send to Miss Watson about her slave Jim that he helped escape. Huck’s entire life consisted of friends and family owning slaves and there being nothing wrong with it. So as Huck joins Jim down the Mississippi it is a huge turning point in that time in history, it was frowned upon and unheard of. Huck struggles to come to terms with himself, it is almost as though he is disappointed that he did that. Throughout the story Huck realizes how awful slavery is and doesn’t know why people are okay with it. At one point in the story Huck does the unthinkable and apologizes to Jim for a prank. “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a slave, but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterward, neither”(86). It is unbelieveable that Huck worked up the courage to apologize for something he did wrong, especially to a