Huckleberry Finn And Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets

Words: 1185
Pages: 5
Open Document
Mark Twain‘s book The adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Stephen Crane’s short novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, are two brilliant narrations exposing picaresque characters in nineteenth century America. Comparing and contrasting Maggie and Huckleberry Finn shows that while both novels and characters have a lot in common, they also are really dissimilar on countless very significant issues. Both Mark Twain and Stephen Crane use realism and local color to reveal their American worlds in the nineteenth century, using colloquial language, realistic details, and the perspective of young heroes to express their observations and thoughts about society. Both agree on the conflict between civilization and freedom, Huck being happy in the wild, living on the island, far from civilization, Maggie and her kinds having no chance to escape poverty and misery in the city. Following Rousseau’s philosophy, Mark Twain and Stephen Crane suggest that civilization corrupts rather than advances human beings. They also comment on human nature and give a sarcastic portrayal of society. Both authors make the reader think about the foolish ways of society, whether it is slavery and justice, religion or human gullibility with the King and Duke in Twain, or Crane and his depiction of the people on the street of the city so “gruesome” and “withered” (Crane), in the bar or at the theater. Both children are alone in the world, Huck because his parents …show more content…
Maggie’s miserable life and death can be blamed on the urban setting and its inescapable ruthless misery, its poverty and its production of victims as much as on her own vision of the world. Huckleberry’s success can be attributed to his own personality, as well as to his surroundings, friends and also the Mississippi river and its more rural
Show More

Related Documents: Huckleberry Finn And Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets

Chapter 25 Essay

activities, an social economic connections for new arrivals to the US. Many women, both native-born and immigrant, developed life-long passions for social activism in the settlement houses, Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York City were two of the most prominent. 1. Settlement houses became centers for women’s activism…

Words 3237 - Pages 13