Social Responsibility comes into play in the first chapter of Huck Finn when Huck is expected to pray so that he does not go to a "bad place". Miss Watson pushes religion onto Huck and his social responsibility is to follow through with what she says because everyone else prays. "Miss Watson kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody went off to bed." (Twain, Pg 3). Huck does not really go along with this kind of social responsibility because he does not care that everyone is praying to eventually go to the "good place" one day. He does not care about being in the bad place because if Tom will be there too then at least they will be together. Also instead of following religion Huck follows his own superstitions, like when he kills the spider at the end of chapter one he thinks that it is a bad omen and something bad will happen to him after that.
Another form of social responsibility that Huck has is based off his education. In Chapter 5 Hucks father says," You're educated, too, they say; you can read and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't?" (Twain, Pg 20) Hucks father expects him to be dumber than himself and he continues to say that "he'll take it out of him" and begins to questions him as to why he would meddle with education. Huck does not follow along social responsibility and likes to do what he wants despite what he's "socially" supposed to do according to other characters. Since his father wasn't and had nothing to do he had nothing better to do than to pay more attention in school and show up for classes, regardless of whether his father wants him to become smarter or not.
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11 years ago
I agreed with all this, though for some reason I pity Pap. We can see Pap lacks education and his past experience must have turned him to the way he is now. If Pap had gotten education, been civilized early at a young age then Huck wouldn’t hate Pap as much as he does and wish for his death. I wonder though why does Huck want to die with Tom? We know their friends, but we also know Huck knows Tom’s too deep in his imaginary world.
ReplyDeleteI love that you focused part of this on education. So often I think that students forget to stop and think about the fact that school was originally designed all around social responsibility. Emmanuel, your reply addresses this topic perfectly by focusing on Pap's lack of education!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with the fact that Huck Finn doesn't really care about the things that Miss Watson thinks are apart of one's social responsibility. I got the impression he was more of a "go with the flow" kind of guy. Once he gets into a routine, he sticks with it. I like how you mentioned the education aspect of social responsibility, I totally agree. Huck's father is toxic and wants Huck to end up just like him. I really liked how you went into depth about the relationship between Huck and Finn, it made me understand the social responsibility side of it better!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your ideas on education. I believe that with every step Huck takes towards on group in society he is being pulled back to another. While Huck tries to educate himself his father comes around to threaten him to get him to stay in the "social responsibility class" he is in. Huck is the only person who can choose what aspect of social responsibility he conforms to, and he may or may not make this choice by the end of the novel.
ReplyDeleteI liked the first quote you used a lot. I think when first reading the chapters I over looked that quote because I feel it's really significant. The Widow and her sister called in the slaves for prayers as well. Does that mean they are trying to make them part of society too? This makes me wonder if Widow Douglas and Miss Watson are truly good or playing at being good. They seem to be genuinely kind people and are showing Huck and the slaves the good structural order of society...yet you can't look past the fact that they OWN slaves. Why is owning a slave socially acceptable. In whose eyes is that a responsibility for the betterment of the society?
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