...Life is constantly testing one’s morality. Morals apply to personal character and showcase ones opinion of good and bad human actions. In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Mark Twain, Huck is just a confused thirteen year old boy growing up in the racist American South. He is the son of an alcoholic and is often misunderstood. Those around Huck consider him to be immature, such as Ms. Watson who acts as a caretaker for Huck throughout his father’s absence. As a child, Huck is able to view the world differently than all the adults around him. His experiences throughout his adventures down the Mississippi river force him to question the things society has taught him. During this adventure, he tends to care more about the opinion of others than his own, however his opinion changes in time. Huck’s biggest test of morality is his relationship with Jim, the escaped slave of Ms. Watson. Huck has always been taught that slaves and those of color are below him just because he is white. This is an internal moral struggle for Huck, because he knows to society he is “wrong,” but to him their friendship makes it “right.” The concept of being wrong in the eyes of society and making it right goes beyond just Huck and Jim’s bond. The relationship that Jim and Huck develop over the course of the story is important because the experiences that they share teach Huck to think for himself, allowing him to trust his morals. Huck has grown up in an environment in which Jim...
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...and Extrinsic Rewards & Motivation August 6, 2011 Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876. One of the most famous stories in the novel is whitewashing the fence. It was a chore that Tom’s aunt Polly had assigned him but Tom found a way to get others to do the work and his first convert was Ben. When Ben told Tom he was going swimming and stated “Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work, wouldn’t you? Course you would!”. That was the start of a powerful lesson. Tom replied “Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suites Tom Sawyer” and he informed Ben that is it was not every day that a boy gets a chance to whitewash a fence and then proceeded to convince Ben that it was a privilege and only a few boys were even capable of doing such a job. Now the situation changed and Ben was willing to give Tom his apple in exchange for a chance for him to have the privilege of whitewashing the fence. “Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played...
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...better person, Huckleberry has come of age. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is difinetly bildungsroman. In the beginning of the novel it is clear that Huckleberry is not mature in the least bit. He has a poor understanding of morals which is to be expected due to his lower class upbringing and lack of education, neither academic nor religious. Huckleberry addresses the fact that he has been living with 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” (1). Although Huckleberry ends up not running away, it is clear to the reader that he is not happy trying to be civilized. He is a typical teenager trying to rebel. He is not interested in being religious or getting an education; he would much rather adventure with his friend, Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry thinks of himself as, “ignorant and so kind of low-down ornery” (15). He has already given up on fitting in with the rest of society. He would rather live in a small cabin off in the woods with his drunk father: “It was kind of lazy and jolly,...
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...Throughout life, society and people change. However, people may change differently than society. An example of this is Huckleberry Finn, in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Huck has changed in many different ways throughout the novel, developing from someone who is childlike and only cares about himself to one who has dealt with many grown-up issues, grown into societal beliefs, and cares about others, even people who are commonly disregarded, which is unlike what society believes. In the novel, Huck starts out not accepting religious beliefs. He sees heaven as a boring place, and doesn’t listen to the Widow or Miss Watson. On pages 10 through 11 it says, “Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed,...
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...How do you define creativity? What makes something creative? Many questions arise when something is labeled creative. When Blake Mycoskie came up with Toms shoes he was thinking of a creative way to put shoes on people of needs feet and make money at the same time. Toms shoes is a is a for profit organization that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need every time a consumer buys a pair. Toms shoes is considered creative because his idea is novel and appropriate as well as socially acceptable. The product started as a little c and over time became a big c. This is how Sawyer defines creativity. Over the course of this paper I will give you the background of Toms shoes and how it evolved from the little c to big c. So one may ask what makes something creative? Creativity refers to when a person creates a product or a solution that is labeled as new and is valuable. The creator could label the product as new and then society or the person buying the product will label it as novel. Since not all creative people are alike it is hard to justify something creative. It is said that something has to be able to be repeated or tweeked in order to be creative. Things on the little c creativity scale is said to just imply basic functions whereas creative products on the big c level are up for Pulitzer and Nobel prize awards. You can see the difference between the two in that type of analogy. Blake Mycoskie has always had dreams of starting his own businesses and building it...
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...civilized society’s way of thinking he has undergone big changes. He sacrifices his home, safety, reputation, memories, and friendships to follow his own morals and is willing to risk everything for friendship. As a result, his time with Jim on the raft had him question his own consciousness and what really is right or wrong. At the beginning of the book, Huck believes that justice is to turn Jim in and if not, he is to blame and his actions are morally to blame as well. As Huck has had numerous opportunities to turn Jim in he never follows through with them, but instead go with what he thinks is right. Huck begins to believe that his former thoughts...
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...ordinary ‘Pike County’ dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap- hazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. THE AUTHOR. Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Scene: The Mississippi Valley Time: Forty to fifty years ago The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapter I Y OU don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly — Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is — and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. Now the...
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...there was a source for constant frustration and violence. This is the background and the huge dust storm that American Realism rose out of. Prior to the Civil War, America was knee deep in the Romantic Movement which included writers such as Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Poe and Whitman. Their writings focused on the puritan aspects of their ancestors or of the dark romance and psychological perspectives writers such as Poe and Melville used. However, after the war, this movement began to fade and Realism increased as the choice reading of the people. This was due to multiple events and changes in culture that led to Americans looking for something better to relate to. The first event was the end of the Civil War. The Civil War showed the violent intentions men had towards each other and also showed the vulnerability of men and the nation and how ungodly man actually was. However, Realism did not begin immediately after the Civil War but rather took off in the 1880’s. So what happened in the 1880’s then? The 1880’s saw the major migration of the typical American from the country to the city due to the rise of the industrial revolution and the increase in jobs in manufacturing and more efficient distribution methods. The migration to the city led to a new culture of Americans whose hard work days with long hours left little room for the desire for imagination and symbolism as American Romanticism had...
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...whole world captivated through his expert writing and lectures. "I never let my schooling interfere with my education (home.eathlink.net/…/twain.html)," Mark Twain once said. Mark Twain was a great inspiration to America in the nineteenth century and is still an inspiration to contemporary writers today. Mark Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the small town of Florida, Missouri. He lived in a small, two-bedroom house, and being the fourth of five children, it was obviously very crowded in their house (Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia 1). In 1839, at the age of four, he and his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri which is located directly adjacent to the Mississippi River (World Book 530). Here is where Twain grew up as a boy. This was where his inspiration of most his books came from. He witnessed things that would later make him the great author as we know him today. Without this period in his life, a huge chunk of literary history would be missing from America. By living on the banks of the Mississippi River, he experienced many wonderful things like colorful steamboats traveling down the river, some would just pass by, while many would stop and exchange cargo. These steamboats would bring a variety of people including comedians, singers, gamblers, swindlers, slave dealers, and a great assortment of other travelers (World Book 530). Things went along fine in Twain's life until he was twelve. At that age, in 1847, his father died. As expected, he...
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...uses the Mississippi River as the centre point of his novel. It symbolises the route toward freedom and escape for Huck and Jim providing the setting for the growth of both a young boy and a country struggling to understand definitions of freedom, individualism and civilisation. Salinger, however, uses his protagonist Holden to explore the materialistic, conformist society he saw developing after WW2. The first extract I chose is from chapter 22 of Catcher in the Rye where Phoebe accuses Holden of hating everything and everyone. Holden reveals here his fantasy of becoming ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ protecting children from falling into the adult world. This links with chapter 31 of Huckleberry Finn where Huck decides to write a letter to Tom Sawyer to tell Miss Watson where Jim is. He soon realises that Miss Watson would sell Jim either way. He resolves to “steal Jim out of slavery.” The theme of rejection is evident in both extracts because Huck rejects conforming to the values of a society filled with hatred a racism and Holden rejects adulthood and conforming to a ‘phony’ society. This leads to both protagonists rejecting situations they see as restricting. “The...
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...Spanish My First Teacher. Having an older sibling made language acquisition an easier process. When we were little, my dad had an old tape recorder he would use to tape songs that came up on the radio. He used it also, to keep track of all the songs my older brother, Alex, learned while attending preschool. In some of those recordings, my baby voice popped trying to imitate his singing. He guided me "¡No Fabish, asi no va, anda canta conmigo, asi, asi¡" (No Fabish, is like this, come on! Sing with me, like this, like this...) His gentle yet firm input provided me with a model to emulate, it enabled me to produce elaborate utterances through singing at an early age. I was one and a half years old when Alex started preschool, from then on, I didn't stop singing, there are more tapes of my preschool singing than all my three brothers combined. I liked learning. I liked school, I still do, and in a big measure I owe it to my older brother Alex's patience and kindness. He was my first teacher. Kindergarten. I wish I could remember more details of the process of my literacy acquisition skills that took place in kindergarten, unfortunately besides the singing I do not. The memories I have had come from going through boxes of old notebooks, worksheets, and collections of artwork that my mother had kept all these years. What these educational archives tell me is that the focus of my early education was on developing the motor skills necessary to write well. There are numerous...
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...NORTH AMERICAN FICTION BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Before starting our study of American Fiction we must understand what American Literature is in itself and which pieces of writing we can include within this label. It is believed that when a piece is written in North America, more precisely in the USA, it would automatically be given this epithet. But it should be taken into account that this idea is quite broad and doesn’t reflect the real essence of the term. However, there is also another definition that gathers this essence: American Literature is the one that represents the Americanism, the singularity of the USA philosophy and culture. This way, instead of focusing on who the author is, it is focused on the content of the writing. In that which concerns Fiction, the following documents are the ones considered as narrative: Speeches Letters Short Stories Essays Political Documents Sermons Novels Diaries 1 FIRST LITERARY EXPRESSIONS The first documents in which the idea of Americanism is very present are the Sermons. They respond to the strict Protestantism settled in the New Continent after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans in the Mayflower (1620) and the Arabella (1630). They established a theocratic community whose main and only point of reference was the Bible. That is why the idea of the ‘city upon a hill’ is still very present in American mentality. As we all know...
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...there was a source for constant frustration and violence. This is the background and the huge dust storm that American Realism rose out of. Prior to the Civil War, America was knee deep in the Romantic Movement which included writers such as Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Poe and Whitman. Their writings focused on the puritan aspects of their ancestors or of the dark romance and psychological perspectives writers such as Poe and Melville used. However, after the war, this movement began to fade and Realism increased as the choice reading of the people. This was due to multiple events and changes in culture that led to Americans looking for something better to relate to. The first event was the end of the Civil War. The Civil War showed the violent intentions men had towards each other and also showed the vulnerability of men and the nation and how ungodly man actually was. However, Realism did not begin immediately after the Civil War but rather took off in the 1880’s. So what happened in the 1880’s then? The 1880’s saw the major migration of the typical American from the country to the city due to the rise of the industrial revolution and the increase in jobs in manufacturing and more efficient distribution methods. The migration to the city led to a new culture of Americans whose hard work days with long hours left little room for the desire for imagination and symbolism as American Romanticism had...
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...discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa) 5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) 6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett) 7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939) 8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949) 9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) 10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) 11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) 12. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no...
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...iaJasper Jones Reading Guide S.A. Jones v2 April 2010 http://www.sajones.com.au Synopsis .................................................................................................................................................. 3 About the Author .................................................................................................................................... 3 Edition Used ............................................................................................................................................ 3 Morality and Ethics ................................................................................................................................. 3 Moral Duality ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Scapegoats .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Morality versus Ethics ......................................................................................................................... 5 Responsibility and Culpability ............................................................................................................. 6 Atonement .......................................................................................................................................... 9 Law and Legality .............................
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