Thesis paper on Huckleberry Finn Thesis paper How many people in this area pray every day? How many go to some church every week? How many of those people do it without even thinking about why they are doing it, only doing it because that’s what they are taught and what they know? Carl Marx says: “religion is the opiate of the masses”.
Young Huck Finn hates praying and hates going to church, just because adults tell him he has to and because it’s never ever done anything for him.So many people act like lemmings and just follow what everyone around them are doing, not Huck Finn, he seems to be a boy that knows more than most adults of our time. He sees through the false securities that adults see and grab onto in religion. Enter miss. Watson, she seems to want young Huck to be praying every day, he tries on the grounds of “you’ll get everything you ask for”.
Although he doesn’t see to grasp this concept completely he understands that prayer doesn’t help half as much as it ought to given how much people put stock in it.The next instance is miss. Watson trying to make Huck go to church, by this time the readers have already found out that Huck literally has no desire for and no faith in religion. So miss.
Watson making him go to church just makes him sneak out and, like now days teenagers, he rebels a little bit a goes and lives with his drunkard dad. Mr. Huck Finn next goes to the grangerfords ranch, where there are definitely lots of problems.One is a vendetta between the two only neighbors you learn about in the area (the grangerfords and the shepardsons) and the other is the grangerfords insisting upon Huck coming to church with them, he probably would slip away, except they all have guns and he doesn’t think it’d be that smart. And then he sees one of the grangerford boys and his cousin killed right in front of his eyes and decides that the world and its many people is strange and untrustworthy. He seems, for a 14- 15 year old boy, to be very in tune to how everything works and how people could “screw” him over.
He knows very well the ways of a con artist and how not to get caught which, in a society where you need to occasionally fend for yourself, he always excels. The biggest change in Huck comes when Mary Jane says she will pray for him and keeps insisting upon doing so, till Huck accepts and thanks her from his heart. Right at this moment you see Huck having a revelation on prayer, which just happens to be “prayer can be useful occasionally”. So you go from the middle of the book and Huck absolutely abhorring prayer to, Huck accepting other people praying and not thinking it’s a complete waste of time.
I think this is a phenomenal change in Huck even if he says he’ll never pray himself. Throughout the rest of the book Huck’s feelings on prayer don’t change past what’s been said. Huckleberry Finn travels 1200 miles and in doing so passes all sorts of weird societal quirks. From whole communities with vendettas to con artists plotting there “get rich scheme” through town after town down the river.
He changes throughout the entire time just by virtue of experiencing the world and the people in it, but also by looking past peoples faults and seeing them as humans and not just what that person has done. He really is an amazing person.
