Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Psychoanalytic theory bases on individual personality where motivation comes from unseen forces which are controlled by the rational and conscious thoughts. This work is a critical analysis of Mark Twain’s book of adventures of huckleberry Finn which is showing all the controversies and contradictions during the era in which the text wrote.

Twain’s life is so influential to the behavior and motivation of the characters in the novel. It is evident; the freedom portrays Huck, the protagonist, referring conformity to the culture of the society as a form of a pound. For instance, Huck preferred that he instead could rather live and sleep in the natural other than stay indoors, which was a constraint to him. Twain goes ahead and also expressed another loss of freedom in the idea of slavery. In this case, the author used Jim, a slave to Huck’s neighbor, Jim plays a significant role in the novel as a conflicting ideal in that era. Twain, however, intends to highlight the situation by emphasizing Jim’s painful experiences of slavery.

Clemens’s work as a reporter in the west brought about factual news and outlandish, which characterized his career as a reporter. In this era, Clemens employed Twain’s ideology of pseudonym, which originated from the slang of the riverboat, which means that water is of two fathoms enhancing easy travel. In his novels The Adventure of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Gilded Age (1873), Clemens wrote about his childhood life in Hannibal, which influenced his recognition at large and his memories on how the whites aided on the runaway of slaves.

Huck reflects the symbol of freedom in chapter VIII where he says no home like a raft. Chapter VIII offers the significance of the float termed as a haven of all the adverse occurrences and pretenses of the society. Other areas looked so cramped up, but a raft is easy and free.

According to Freud Sigmund, the human mind, specifically, the unconscious part affects human beings even in dreams even though most occurrences are unpleasant and unacceptable. Huckleberry, in this text, narrates mostly on violence. In his narration, he adds his thoughts, and this helps us understand Twain’s prejudice against abusive parents. According to Twain, parents are supposed to be role models for their children. Jim is a caring and loving father when it comes to his biological children; he even invests this kind of love into Huck. Huck can mature up through him and also obtains a very different perspective towards life. Huck gains new character traits that his biological father never offered because Jim taught him how to be loyal, love, friendship, and compassion. When Jim comes back to his senses that he is not kind to his biological children, he starts regretting and decides to show more affection and love to Huck.

All the psychoanalytic conditions, symptoms, signs, and stages cut across the simple work of fiction narrated by a child, Huck Finn. The different stages, for example, the idea of repressed desires, Thanatos, and how they come back in different ways, for instance, in DreamWorks, through parapraxis. All these are evident in the book of adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Lacan’s concept of the unconscious, nucleus of the human being and orderly network, together with his theory of the mirror stage, is packaged in one to this novel. When Huck was dealing with the Duke and Dauphin, another family is born. He keeps on inventing new families while bringing his own to death, that is destruction. Huck finds a real family towards the end, which was a real one (Solomon 438). His adventures follow a family pattern — the Duke, together with the king, pose as heirs of a fortune left by Wilks.

Huck escapes from a mistreating family whereby his father Pap Finn mistreats him, then avoids” over-civilized” adoption (Solomon 440) the lack of a family subjects Huck to vulnerability. All the subjectivisms based on the failure, loss, and absence (green 163).

Women are viewed as weaker gender hence carrying a negative perspective towards them. Due to this fact, women are prone to sexual abuses and stigmatization in The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. In the novel, every woman figure portrays society’s norms of the position and role of the woman. Miss Watson follows all the society rules without question. She is the most prominent in representing the hypocritical religious and ethics that are criticized by Twain.

The Wilks sisters portrayed as simple, overly trusting, and unwise. Joanna, Mary Jane, and Susan put total trust in their uncle when their father died, who, in return, took advantage of them. They gave their uncles all their money to invest. Mark Twain displays women in the society as basic caretakers and nurturers of homesteads. Women are fragile, simple-minded, and sensitive. Aunt Sally is so powerless in her marriage. Her position as a common woman had no rights hence viewed as secondary to men.

Reference

Derbel, Emira. “Teaching Literature through Comics: An Innovative Pedagogical Tool.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 8.1 (2019): 54-61.

SAWYER, OFTOM. THE MAIN CHARACTER’S MATURITY IN TWAIN’S ADVENTURES. Diss. HASANUDDIN UNIVERSITY, 2017.