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Lying In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

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Lying is an often occurring theme in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. On the very first paged Huckleberry tells the reader that the truth is often stretched. Huck comedically mentions that one might recognise him from the book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. This book, however, was written by a man named Mark Twain who only mainly told the truth. The majority of the protagonists are very talented liers. This is shown through the characters Huckleberry Finn, the King and the Duke, and Tom Sawyer. These characters all lie, but they lie in different ways and for different reasons.
Huckleberry Finn lies numerous times throughout the story.Huck is very quick-witted and clever in how he deceives people. Huck’s reasoning for lying is to either …show more content…

At first we do not know this. Tom lies only for the thrill of it. Tom is easily excited by adventure and loves to follow the rules of the books. Throughout the story, Huckleberry Finn paints Tom Sawyer as his hero and is very pleased to stumble across him at Aunt Sally’s house. Jim was brought to Aunt Sally’s place and ‘imprisoned’. When Tom hears of this he became very excited and told Huck that he is going to help him break Jim out. Huck is very startled that Tom of all people would help a runaway slave, but was glad for the help. Both Tom and Huck come up with plans for freeing Jim. Huck, knowing that he does not have much say in the matter, says that “I went to think out a plan, but only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from” (pg 232). Tom then declares a plan that involves a lot of sneaking around and makes Jim’s life miserable. To top it off, on the day of the break out, Tom tells the family of an attempt to free Jim and they come out with guns and put all of their lives at risk. When Aunt Polly comes down and clears things up, we learn that Jim was already freed by Miss Watson. Mark Twain, as a consequence for Tom’s lying, does one of the worst things an author can do to a character. Twain makes the reader really irritated with Tom for the miserable things he does to Aunt Sally, Huck, and Jim and then the reader finds out it was all for naught. This makes everyone really

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Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. born on March 4, 1877 – July 27, 196) was an American inventor, businessman, and community leader. His most notable inventions were a smoke hood. notably used in a 1916 tunnel construction disaster rescue. Morgan also discovered and developed a chemical hair-processing and straightening solution. He created a successful company based on his hair product inventions along with a complete line of hair care products and became involved in the civic and political advancement of African Americans, especially in and around Cleveland, Ohio.

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Huck details the way he and Jim “set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t’other for him” to show the king how much they respected him (Twain 94). Also, while journeying down the river with Jim, Huck’s curiosity is shown when he describes his yearning to explore the “place right about the middle of the island” (Twain 36).Huck convinces Jim to let him explore and see what resources the island had. Tom’s character is reckless,

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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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(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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It goes without saying that Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the best written novels of all time. The novel is about a young boy named Huckleberry Finn who runs away from his father a few days after his father regained custody from the Widow. Throughout his peregrination down the Mississippi River, Huck encounters many people who hoax others. As described in the examples cited, it is clear to say the theme of deception is often exhibited throughout this novel.

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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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The incongruity displayed through Tom Sawyer and the Grangerford family creates schemes that showed their character's immaturity. Huck followed Tom’s plan to save Jim and if Huck didn’t follow through with the plan, it saved Jim from a lot of pain. Tom’s irrational thoughts concluded "[the plan] was for us to run him down the river, on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and tell him about his being free, and take him back home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time... and then he would be a hero, and so would we". This reveals how immature and greedy Tom is and how he would risk a black man’s life you prove he is a hero.

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Huck’s lies vary from nearly immoral to decent and kind natured throughout the story, which constructs a large portion of the spectrum that Twain has so brilliantly defined. Jim, while also being used to combat the traditional belief of the time that black people are slaves rather than human beings, is also used to create the top end of the moral spectrum. Twain’s use of the moral spectrum blurred the line between right and wrong for people of the post-war era of the 1800’s, and changed the minds of many about the morality of lying. The use of this spectrum, along with the building blocks of modern morality, rewrote the way the world thinks about ethical

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In his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Huck), Mark Twain satirizes falsehood, and dishonesty through Huck’s vernacular voice in order to show the ignorance of the shameful southern culture where the values consist of greed and manipulation. Although Twain criticizes this seemingly mendacious behavior of lying, he argues that there are circumstances in which deception is acceptable. He adopts a typical southerner mentality through Huck’s genuine voice for the purpose of expressing to the audience that lying is appropriate in situations where the lie gets someone out of trouble, protects somebody’s feelings, or doesn’t cause any damage to others, and it is inappropriate when it has immoral intentions. Throughout the novel, Huck learns

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After Huck finds out that Jim is captive, Huck “set down and cried. [He] couldn’t help it” (210). After returning to the raft and not finding Jim there, Huck is overcome with emotion. The fear of Jim not being around causes Huck to realize how important Jim is to him. The friendship they developed on the river and through their adventure causes Huck to be more concerned for Jim’s safety than society’s need to keep Jim captive.

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Everyone lies. Some people try to justify this immoral action by claiming that they are using their lies for good, instead of evil. It is often hard to know at what point a lie becomes an irrevocable, cruel action as opposed to a convenient alternate explanation. Huck Finn, the main character and narrator in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, also wrestles with this dilemma. Growing up in the South in the midst of slavery, Huck feels forced to be dishonest about his identity many times in order to protect Jim, a runaway slave Huck has grown close to (appositive).

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While books influence Tom he still sees African Americans as objects when devising a plan to free Jim, Tom just cares about the adventure that goes along with the plan (Twain 216). Tom is has grown up in a society where white people see blacks as object not people. While also being twelve years old he just isn’t that interested in the real plan of freeing Jim. Tom is a

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