Huck lives in a society depicted as “sivilized”. What society deems to be right and wrong is locked into Huck’s mind. Because of this, Huck has this inner turmoil when facing decisions. This brought up the idea of our hashtag, #illgotohell. The scene where this quote comes from is when Huck rips up the letter to Ms. Watson. Huck was thinking about what society thinks is right. Writing the letter is what society deems to be right. This created Huck to look into himself and really think about what he believed was right. This occurs in many situations throughout the book. It is a prevalent theme that only occurs when Huck needs to make a crucial decision. What this hashtag is trying to emulate is, like Huck, a person should just be themselves and do what they think is right, not what society thinks.
When Huck was facing inner turmoil regarding the law he was raised to believe and Jim’s own natural rights he should have, Huck sided with helping Jim. Going against the moral code of society, Huck entered the state of mind where he already deemed himself of being sinful and going to hell. Feeling he cannot be good because the label of good contradicts many of his beliefs, he accepted the fate of being evil and unburdened himself from the weight of societies restraints so he could be free to make his own decisions. With this mentality in mind, when Huck was accompanying the King and Duke who were real robbers, he revealed who they were and what their plan was to one of the targets, Mary Jane. Ironically this juxtoposed the Huck from the civilized world which we were introduced to in chapter 2. The novels leading scenes show how one of Huck’s reasons to stay in society was to be in a murderous and robbing group led by Tom Sawyer. Although their plans never went through, the ideas they had seemed to completely juxtapose what society deemed good. I feel this is Mark Twain’s comment on the social problems still faced after Civil War; society is still skewed and no matter how good we think it is, it is far from perfect.
Another example of Huck’s inner turmoil is when the two men on the skiff approach him and ask about the man in the raft. In this scene Huck is sitting in the canoe as Jim is hidden under a blanket in the raft tied to the canoe. The men explain that they are looking for some runaway slaves who escaped the night prior. They also ask if they can see who’s under the blanket in the raft. During this conversation it’s clear that Huck is having some issues lying to these men he even hesitates and thinks that he can’t do it before he tells them that the man is white. In order to get the men off Jim’s trail even more Huck makes them think that the man is his father, and that he has smallpox. The men not only leave as quickly as they can but even give Huck $40 dollars to help his sick father. After the men leave Jim congratulates Huck on a job well done, but he still feels uneasy about the situation.
The society that Huck finds himself in is one that is very discriminatory and very racist. It’s clear that Huck still doesn’t know what’s right and wrong; he’s still just a child trying to figure things out. But on some level he understands that what society is telling him about Jim is wrong. He might not understand what implications that may have yet, but he’s willing to go to hell if it means keeping Jim around.
Shon Shalit, Megan Ng, Pulkit Kumar, Zackary Losak
