Jarizza Estillore
Ms. Sinclair
ENGL3S
05-16-11
Lies and Deception in Frankenstein and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Frankenstein, Mark Twain and Mary Shelley imply through their characters that lying and deceiving is acceptable if it is intended for good, and immoral if intended for bad. Huck is portrayed as a child of innocence and naivety. He is forced to lie and deceive others for the safety of his friend. Duke and Dauphin are professional con men, who lie and deceive others to swindle them of their money. Victor lies to others to hide the creature he created, so he will not face judgement and isolation. Through these characters we see the different reasons why each characters lie and deceive and what it results into.
Huck Finn is a child of only thirteen years, and he is taken in by the Widow Douglas due to his father’s drinking problems. Huck runs away but returns because it is the “respectable” thing to do. He believes strongly in superstition that he predicts when he’ll have a bad day. “Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle… fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time.” (Twain 3) Huck is obedient towards his father, Pap, despite the fact that he hates him. Huck learns how to lie and deceive people from his father. When Pap returns to town and tries to get Huck back from the Widow, he told the judge how much he wanted to change and how much he loves Huck. (Twain 22) Once Huck returns to living with his father, Huck starts getting used to living like a “hog”. He picks on his fathers ways and sayings. He learns to cuss, use a gun and a knife, and most of all lie to people. In order to escape, Huck fakes his death by killing a wild pig and dragging its bloody body from the house to the river. Then Huck lies and fakes a smallpox outbreak on the raft in order to prevent Jim, an African-American runaway slave, being discovered. (Twain 89-91) Due to this, Huck learns that lying does not have to be used for evil but can also be used for good. He learns when Pap’s influence will result into good and when it results into bad, and therefore knows what he is doing is good or bad.
The Essay on Huck Finns Real Father
Huck s True Father In Mark Twain s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn young Huck seems to have two fathers. Pap, his biological father, and Jim, the runaway slave who befriends Huck and acts the way a real father should. Pap (Hulk s biological father) is an alcoholic who treats Huck very poorly. He beats Huck whenever he is hitting the bottle and only returned to Huck s life when he found ...
On the other hand, the Duke and Dauphin lie for a selfish reason, which is for money. In “Arkansaw” they created a show in order to earn money. Everyone in town, who were eligible, went to the show only to be ripped off of their money. To pay such a high price for a show proved to be undeserving angered the townspeople, so the Duke and Dauphin runs away, as fast as they can away from the town. (Twain 150) This proves that they are nothing but “rapscallions”. However, when Huck thought that the Duke and Dauphin can not do any worse, they go try to steal a deceased person’s money. The Duke and Dauphin pretends to be Peter Wilk’s brother and wins the people’s hearts through their false tears. Huck, with his young mind, tries to give back all of the innocent people’s money and get the Duke and Dauphin arrested. He does this because he feels that it is wrong to let the Duke and Dauphin rob three girls of everything they have. (Twain 163-203) The Duke and Dauphin’s only goal and desire is to get wealthy and rich with other people’s money. This causes Huck to become “ashamed of the human race” (Twain 163) that he can not believe that there are people who would stoop as low like an animal, just to get money. Even with this realization, Huck still can not shake the truth that his father is one of those men.
Victor Frankenstein’s character is also like these two men; he lies for selfish reason. He lies in order to protect himself and for fame. Victor deceives everyone around him through the secrecy of his creation. Victor’s secrecy became so big that he regretted the day he created the creature. The deaths of his loved ones caused him grief and pain, so much that he chose to continue living for as long as the creature is alive. His vengeance toward the monster is so great that he chased after him for years and years and even at the North Pole. Victor from the beginning is selfish for he wants to find and learn the secret behind the nature of life. He became obsessed with the idea of being the only man on earth to know such a valuable knowledge that he became blind with ambition. He is not able to see the consequences and the responsibility that come with the knowledge. Victor worked in creating the creature for many days and fantasized of how proud and jealous everyone would be. However, when life entered the creature his dream shattered and the image was burned in his brain that it constantly haunts him. He never thought that he would carry the burden until the day he dies:
The Essay on Adventurs Of Huck Fin
-Huck's pap returns and kidnaps him -Huck fakes his death and runs away -A house floats by and they plunder it. -Huck sneaks ashore in a woman's dress to find out about the situation -They set off down the river, and they have an adventure on a steam boat, get separated by fog, and a boat hits them. -The Grangerfords take Huck in, and he escapes. -The Duke and Dauphin put on a play, then pretend ...
I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad, and this in itself would forever have chained my tongue. But, besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast. I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy and was silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret. Yet, still, words like those I have recorded would burst uncontrollably from me. I could offer no explanation of them, but their truth in part relieved the burden of my mysterious woe. (Shelley 192)
He keeps the secret all to himself and does not tell anyone about it for he fears that they might become ashamed of him and call him crazy. Victor’s deception is the trigger that kills all of his family.
The fact that Huck is the only character from both books that uses lies and deception, imply that there are more evil people than good. Huck Finn, a child of only thirteen years, and what he does to survive, portray how corrupt society is. Though children are often used to symbolize the nativity and purity of man, Huck Finn, is the opposite. Huck has witness many tragedy and wrong doings that he knows far well better than even some adults the difference between right and wrong. Victor, the Duke and Dauphine however represent the people who have corrupt ambitions. The authors try to show how children are the ones who do more good things than adults, when on the contrary it is the role of adults to teach children about the world and the right choices they should make.
The Essay on Should Children Be Tried as Adults
There is a saying “If you do the crime, you must do the time”. But does that apply to children. Should children be tried as adults?. While some people praise this as a means of stopping young offenders before they start on a “career” of crime, others find it very inappropriate and unjust. This paper will examine questions, pros and cons of whether children should be tried as adults. Discussion I ...
http://www.shmoop.com/frankenstein/lies-deceit-quotes.html
http://www.shmoop.com/huckleberry-finn/lies-deceit-quotes.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/quotes.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/huckfinn/study.html#explanation1
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