Huck Finn
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," according to Ernest Hemingway. Along with Ernest, many others believe that Huckleberry Finn is a great book, but is the novel subversive? Since this question is frequently asked, people have begun to look deeper into the question to see if this novel is acceptable for students in schools to read. First off subversive means something is trying to overthrow or destroy something established or to corrupt (as in morals). According to Lionel Trilling, " No one who reads thoughtfully the dialectic of Huck's great moral crisis will ever again be wholly able to accept without some question and some irony the assumptions of the respectable morality by which he lives, or will ever again be certain that what he considers the clear dictates of moral reason are not merely the engrained customary beliefs of his time and place." Trilling feels that Huck Finn is such a subversive character that this will not make people believe in something totally again, because they will fear being wrong like the society in Huckleberry Finn was. I believe this and I think the subversion in the novel is established when Mark Twain begins to question the acceptable moralit
In the end, Jim was freed from his "dungeon" and Twain now must bring him and Huck back into the "real" world. When Twain reaches this point in the novel, the only thing that he can do is try to bring Huck and Jim back into society. The Grangerfords and another family called the Sheperdson's have had a feud going on for 30 years, but no one knows why. " (108) This conversation is a very important role in determining if this novel is subversive or not. " "Well how can we do it if we don't know what it is?" "Why, blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?" (8-9) This is a conversation between Tom Sawyer and his gang of robbers. The irony in this, would be that both families are totally fine with this, and continue with the killing of each other. Little does Huck know, that this was a cruel joke played on Jim. "Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. He is trying to prove that sometimes what is accepted is not always the correct way.
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Acceptance Essays
