Essay on Catcher in the Rye

Submitted By lukeseiler
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was and always will be one of the greatest novels of all time. It’s a fascinating story that allows us to explore a young boy’s thoughts (also Twain’s view) of society. At the beginning of the story, Huck doesn’t want to ever be civilized and at the end of the story, Huck still doesn’t want to be civilized. However, by the end of the story, Huck’s reasons behind not wanting to be civilized change from the beginning of the story.
When the story begins, Huck talks about how he doesn’t want to be “sivilized” when he is sent to go live with the widow. Because he doesn’t want to have to follow all of her complicated rules, he decides to run away. Fortunately, Tom Sawyer, acting as the voice of reason, tries to help Huck out and brings him home. This happens in the first chapter when Huck narrates, “The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out… But Tom Sawyer, he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectful. So I went back.” In this quote, we are first introduced to Huck’s character; he doesn’t want to be civilized and want to be free. Huck thinks living in society is boring and finds it rather annoying when people tell him what to do. Huck wants to be free to make his own choices, whether or not society deemed is acceptable. Several pages later, we find Huck living with Pap instead of the widow because he was taken away. Surprisingly, Huck has no problem with this and actually enjoyed living with Pap, demonstrating his hate for society and having to be told what to do by everyone. On page 18, Huck says, “It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like fit at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took it up again because Pap hadn’t no objections. It was all pretty good time up in the woods there, take it all around.” This quote demonstrated that Huck hated being told what is and isn’t right in society and couldn’t wait to be free. Even though Huck suffers abuse from Pap, the new life he now has allows him to live free. This shows that Huck will never willingly return to the “rules” society sees as right. He also enjoys living independently without having to please people.
Later in the story, in chapter 23, Huck is sailing down the river with Jim and says, “I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and children, away up yonder, and he was low
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