Huck, Emma and Asher: A Critical Analysis - Essay Example

Huck, Emma and Asher: A Critical Analysis December 7, 2005 Literature can often provide helpful clues to the paths we all must take in life such as the dawning of self-awareness. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jane Austen’s Emma and Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev all provide several key insights into this journey through each respective protagonist. While Huckleberry Finn seems to have an almost innate sense of what is morally right even in the face of what is socially acceptable, Emma seems to have what’s socially acceptable foremost in her mind and only realizes what is morally correct toward the end of the story. Asher Lev is left still unresolved as to his sense of self by the end of his story. Thanks to literary elements such as sociologic character traits, figurative language and setting, readers of these three stories are provided with clues as to the protagonists’ growth throughout each novel. The story of Huckleberry Finn begins with an “unsivilised” boy growing up in the home of a pair of elderly women following the arrest of his father, also known as the town drunk. The widows work to reform Huck into a behavior in keeping with the social norms of his times, but fail because of an already well-developed sense of self thanks to a childhood of neglect. Perhaps because of this unique childhood in which he was forced to care for himself, Huck also finds himself questioning the moral correctness of societal norms in issues such as slavery and robbery. By the end of the novel, Huck is consciously rejected the rules of society in favor of his own innate sense of what is right. In direct opposition to the story of Huckleberry Finn, Emma is a spoiled child of privilege, consistently treated as the highest ranking female of her home and her town. She enjoys playing with the lives of others, carefully manipulating events as she can to try to bring about the social conditions she feels each individual deserves. To her credit, it is usually for her subject’s benefit that she is concerned. However, all these machinations serve only to mask her true self under the surface. Through trial and error on behalf of others, Emma slowly comes to realize the true nature of her own feelings and motivations. Like Emma, Asher Lev doesn’t begin the process of self-examination until later in his life than Huck Finn. Brought up in a sheltered society, his first experiences in determining his own identity emerge when he finds himself working to defend his art against his father, who does not approve of the subjects Asher portrays. Although he is Jewish, many of Asher’s paintings center upon the Christian crucifix. He does exhibit enough self-awareness to stand up to his parents and request that he remain in New York even when his father has accepted a position overseas, but it is not until Asher himself goes overseas on his own that he begins to understand the suffering of others at his expense. Although this revelation finally comes to him, by the end of the novel, he is still conflicted about his art and his relationships. In terms of society’s measurements, each of these characters demonstrate growth through their actions in response to societal norms. Huck continues to reject society in order to remain true to his concept of what is morally and ethically right, such as the issue of Jim’s freedom. “... [P]eople will call me a low down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum...” (Twain) Huck says about finding Jim in hiding, but he has already decided that slavery is wrong and will not contribute to the practice. In attempting to make the proper match for her friend Harriet, Emma wants "to see [Harriet] permanently well-connected -- and to that end it will be advisable to have as few odd acquaintance as may be" (Austen, 31), yet by the end of the novel, Emma is most happy to see Harriet engaged to the very man she earlier dubbed to be an “odd acquaintance.” For Asher Lev, the growth is a little harder to see as his own identity is somewhat buried in the environment in which he lives, but once he escapes that environment, he is able to start evaluating more of his own beliefs: “Away from my world, along in an apartment that offered me neither memories nor roots, I began to find old and distant memories of my own, long buried by pain and time and slowly brought to the surface now by the sight of waiting white canvases and by the winter emptiness of the small Parisian street” (Potok, 306-7). Language plays a large role in identifying for the reader the progress in the character’s journey toward self-awareness as well. Huck’s journey towards maturity is evident when he shares his thoughts about Tom Sawyer at the end of the novel: “Here was a boy that was respectable and well brought up … and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and himself a shame and his family a shame, before everybody. I couldn’t understand it no way at all. It was outrageous. …” (Twain, 224-25). This is one of Huck’s more mature statements in the novel. He knows how smart Tom Sawyer is and does not understand why Tom would not put his talent to good use, revealing his own sense of what is right regardless of his own behavior. Emma’s linguistics in exploring her own actions in the managing of Harriet and Elton claims it "was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple." She is "quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more" (137). Upon finishing the painting of his mother being crucified, Asher says, “I had brought something incomplete into the world. Now I felt its incompleteness. ‘Can you understand what it means for something to be incomplete?’ my mother had once asked me. I understood, I understood.” (Potok, 312), illustrating how the character was still unresolved in his perceptions. The setting of each story also plays a large role in helping the reader to understand the path of self-enlightenment of each character. For Huck, the story takes place along the wide, rolling Mississippi River in a time and place that was both strict and lenient in its treatment of children. Huck is left to grow up on his own even though he is also expected to “wear proper clothes” and “stop smoking.” Emma, meanwhile, lives a sheltered life in which nothing is ever permitted to go wrong, until she starts taking things into her own hands and begins to feel the consequences as when Harriet confesses her love for Mr. Knightley to Emma. “A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched -- she admitted -- she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriets having some hope of return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!” (Austen, 407). Similarly, Asher Lev does not begin to suspect the underlying principles in the lives of those around him, and therefore in his own life, until he leaves the sheltered society in which he grows up for the Parisian streets. In isolation, he sees the similarity that exists between himself and his mother as he “began to sense something of her years of anguish. Standing between two different ways of giving meaning to the world, and at the same time possessed by her own fears and memories, she had moved now toward me, now toward my father, keeping both worlds of meaning alive, nourishing with her tiny being, and despite her torments, both me and my father” (Potok, 309). Through such revelations as they are made through setting, language and the sociological traits of each character, Mark Twain, Jane Austen and Chiam Potok reveal how their characters mature into themselves as a result. With the relative freedom of choice afforded to Huck in his early years, making solid decisions about the world around him was made a bit easier once he made the decision to escape the civilizing influence of the widows. Emma and Asher both had to struggle to their revelations by escaping the sheltered lives in which they had grown up, but that they were able to is demonstrated to the reader through the use of subtle yet distinct literary elements that provide clues to what the character is thinking, seeing or reacting to. References Austen, Jane. (1984). Emma. city published: Bantam Classics; Reissue edition. Potok, Chiam. (August 27, 1996). My Name is Asher Lev . city published: Bantam Classics; Reissue edition. Twain, Mark. (2002). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. G. Cardwell, J. Seelye. City published: Penguin Classics. Read More