Throughout the first five chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you already begin to notice how important social responsibility is to the story. As a young boy, Huck is expected to go to church, be polite, go to school, etc, but that’s not really how Huck is programmed to live. Mostly, he just does what he is used to. Miss Watson is sort of the enforcer of social responsibility in the story. On the other hand, Huck’s father is the complete opposite of that idea; he is portrayed as an uncivilized drunk who will get nowhere in life. Huck’s father is a representation of everything Miss Watson is against. I think there’s a part of Miss Watson that considers Huck as charity work. As if though it is her social responsibility to civilize the poor, little boy who has a drunk, dead-beat for a father. At this point, I’m not sure if she genuinely cares about Huck Finn or if she’s taking care of him because she feels like she has to. Huck is more of a “go with the flow” kind of boy. If a routine is set for him, he just goes with it. With Miss Watson, he got used to the idea of school, church, and not cursing, but when his father forced him to stay in that cabin, he got into the habit of doing nothing and cursing a lot.
I feel that in the first five chapters Huck is torn between three different groups of social responsibility, one in his father, one in Ms. Watson and the Widow Douglas, and the third with his friends. These people live in different societies driven by alcohol, religion, and superstition respectively. As Huck attempts to choose his own path each of these groups are pulling him towards there values. The real question will be, which does he pick by the end on the novel?
ReplyDeleteRaven, interesting ideas about the Widow Douglas. In life in general, how much do you think foster families care about the children they take in versus how much of it is straight up charity? Do you think that the widow has a social responsibility to take care of Huck? Would someone else do it if she had not stepped up?
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