Independence-P5

__Examples of satirizing of independence in Huck Finn:__

Independence is shown through Huck's attempt at escaping from the society that is trying to civilize him. However, as he gets further and further form the society he knows, he travels further and further into the deep South. This could be compared to the relations between America and Britain. In the days of the revolution, Britain wanted us to conform to their ways and ideas. America in response, revolts to gain our independence.


 * "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. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back."(Chapter 1, pg 1)**

Another example of how Mark Twain made fun of the idea of American independence was his story of Jim. Jim is similar to the immigrants and idealists of America in his search for freedom from oppression. Something very ironic about Jim's story though, is that unlike all the immigrants to America in the 1800's, Jim is fleeing from oppression //in// America, which is supposed to be the land of the "free". Another thing highly ironic about Jim's journey of indepence from slavery is the route he choses. The night he runs away he learns that "de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans". (Chapter 8, pg. 58) When he and Huck begin their trip down the Mississippi and presumably towards freedom, they are heading //south,// into the hotbed of slavery in the Deep South. In fact, Jim and Huck are headed to New Orleans, the place where Jim was going to be sold in the first place. Illogically, Jim and Huck continue on their journey down south even when they pass the free states, which were their goal. Perhaps Twain is trying to tell us in his character's unnsensical journey that many people, in the pursuit of independence from whatever foe, often chose the most difficult paths.