Why Is Huck Finn Wrong

As Huck sat down in the raft, his mind raced with thoughts of the special moments he and Jim had on their journey. His heart was breaking, tearing apart with conflicting decisions. The pros and cons seemed to keep overlapping each other every time he was ready to make a choice, essentially taking him back to square one. Huckleberry (Huck) Finn, the major character in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, struggles with what is right versus what is wrong. However, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne knows what is the right thing to do, but she is still scorned and ridiculed for having responsibility. In these two books, the clear object of understanding is the internal conflicts each major character has to

Huck knows that at any point he could turn in Jim and get money as a reward, but there is something about an escaping slave that seems reasonable. He understands that helping a slave break free is looked down upon by many. Huck told himself in Chapter 31, “It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a (man) to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame.” (Twain). In this point of the story, Huck believes that might be a wrong decision to help Jim run away. The same way Huck could be despised, Hester Prynne is already being sneered at. Hester gets publicly shamed and ridiculed, but as the saying goes, “It takes two to tango.” Later on in the book, Arthur Dimmesdale, the high priest that everyone adores, is found out to be the father. Hester is derided, yet Dimmesdale is

Jim is very caring and respectful with others, while in return he gets the opposite. Despite Jim being a good man, the “king”, a scammer who rode along with Huck and Jim on their journey to New Orleans, sold Jim for forty dollars. Huck’s only true friend on the voyage sold for so little money had became his breaking point. While Huck’s crucial moment was losing Jim, Hester from The Scarlet Letter would do anything to not allow the townspeople to take away her only treasure, her daughter. Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl’s father, was not belittled like Hester was. In chapter 23 of The Scarlet Letter it said, “This earthly faintness was, in their view, only another phase of the minister’s celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, ha he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven!” The townspeople were blinded by the ignorance their eyes