The difficult choice

Gustavo Quintero
English 48B
January 25, 2008
Journal #12 Mark Twain

Quote:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"-and tore it up.



Summary:
"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", reaches the books climax when Huck Finn chooses saving his friend Jim and hell over heaven.


Response:
There is not much I can write that will give this quote enough justice about it's impact and tremendous meaning to the book and its audience. The power that this quote holds is just enormous. What I find interesting about Huck Finn is how much of a believer he is in the Christian heaven and hell. Everyone, especially Tom Sawyer, calls out Huck Finn for being ignorant and not very smart. Yet what they do not see is just how incredibly bright Huck Finn is. Granted it took him almost the whole book to come to the realization that blacks are humans too but in this point or race relations seeing a black person as a human is the last thing that is going through the thought process of a white person. It's funny how Miss Watson was trying to "civilize" Huck when it actually turns out to be the person that everybody would have least expected.

The above quote is the moral highpoint in the life of a child that has no family and is cast into society as a no good vagrant. Yet even in these terrible circumstances Huck Finn is able to achieve a level of moral enlightenment that almost no one knows. Its just amazing how one line of a book can have so much emotion and feelings attached. Huck Finn is breaking all of societies rules by helping the Jim escape and still Huck finds it within himself to throw away societies and religions preconceptions about Jim and make the right choice. Huck Finn at this point in the book is leaps and bounds ahead of everybody in terms of his morale standing. Even though he honestly believes that he is going to hell for his decision , Huck Finn has no idea that he just bought himself a guaranteed spot into Heaven.