Comparing Roles: Huck, Emma and Asher - Essay Example

Comparing Roles: Huck, Emma and Asher Many people continue to question why we should read literature at all. Anything good was written years ago and no longer has any bearing on modern life, or so the argument goes. Whether we choose to believe it or not, though, literature continues to have a significant impact on our lives even if it’s only in the form of the movies we watch on TV. Non-readers may not realize it, but a lot of the ideas behind some of our more popular films are inspired by the classic literature they disdain. Although the popularity of these films is almost never attributed to the values or lessons they teach, these lessons are taught anyway through the simple enjoyment of the story. Whether a piece of classic literature, a modern filmic remake or a completely new tale, literature can give those who take the time to enjoy it important information about how to grow up and be an upstanding citizen and moral individual. Such sweeping ideas cannot be sent in a single story or even simply instructed as in learning to read. Instead, stories tend to focus on a unique and important time in life such as coming of age and an important form of growth in that period. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jane Austen’s Emma and Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev all focus upon the character’s coming of age as each one struggles to form their own opinion regarding who they are, who they want to be and how they fit within their greater society. For example, Huckleberry Finn is shown to have a kind of innate sense of morally correctness even when it requires flying in the face of socially accepted rules and expected behaviors. Emma is intimately linked in with what is socially acceptable but takes some time before she realizes that what is morally correct might not match. Compared to these characters, Asher Lev’s issues remain unsettled and he reaches the end of his story with an unclear sense of self as a result. Readers gain a sense of how these characters have grown through the respective authors’ use of literary devices such as the development of specific character traits, the use of figurative language and the careful portrayal of setting. Through the progression of these stories, the degree of the characters’ growth is shown by permitting the reader an understanding of their sociologic positioning and understanding. At the opening of his story, Huckleberry Finn is seen as an “unsivilised” boy in every activity. He is being raised in the first civilized home he’s ever known, cared for by a pair of elderly women after his father, the town drunk, is arrested charged with committing a violent crime. The widows struggle to change Huck’s wild behavior into a more socially acceptable form of behavior which he strongly rejects because their rules make little sense compared to the common sense solutions he had devised for himself as a means of surviving a very neglectful childhood. It is presumably because of this unique experience that Huck finds it almost compulsory to question the rules he is taught whether they are as meaningless as whether one should eat with a fork or a knife or as important as whether one should own slaves. By the end of his journey, Huck intentionally rejects the contradictory and arbitrary ‘rules’ of his society in order to pursue a more equitable existence focused on doing what is morally right as judged by his own inner conscience. While Huck moves from a moral existence to a social correctness and back to a moral focus, Emma begins her story fully versed in what is considered socially correct with little or no awareness of the importance of moral or personal mediation. She is a pampered only child of a widower and is now accustomed to managing her father’s household with impunity. Because of her social position, she feels she is best qualified to determine the proper course of action others should take with the unconscious effect of masking her own inner self and sense of right under a social framework of expected outcomes and behaviors. However, as she struggles to create the perfect world for her friends, Emma is eventually able to realize the true nature of her inner being. Like Emma, Asher Lev doesn’t begin the process of self-examination until later in his life. Having grown up in a highly sheltered social sphere, Asher is not forced to consider his inner ideas to any great extent until he finds it necessary to defend his art, often depicting the Christian crucifix, to his Jewish father. Asher has enough self-awareness to confront his parents about his desire to stay in New York when the rest of the family moves away, but he doesn’t begin to understand the suffering he’s caused until he takes up his own travel. While Huck and Emma seem to find a happy balancing point by the end of their stories, Asher Lev remains conflicted between social expectations and inner morality. Each of these authors makes their characters positions clear through their various reactions to external events. Throughout his story, Huck continuously finds it necessary to reject the social rules he’s been taught in order to feel right in his heart about his actions. This can be seen in his struggle over Jim’s freedom. When Huck finds Jim in hiding and discovers the reason for it, he explains his decision, “... [P]eople will call me a low down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum...” (Twain, 2002, p. 43), but he is aware that Jim is a human being with real human fears and needs. This makes him decide not to contribute to the morally wrong practice of slavery no matter what civilized society says about it. Emma reveals her social biases when she describes her goals for Harriet. She insists she only 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, 1984, p. 31), but it is clear in the end that Emma has changed her mind about this, taking a shift toward inner fidelity when she helps celebrate Harriet’s marriage to this same ‘odd acquaintance’. It is a little more difficult to identify the growth of Asher Lev. His sense of identity is smothered by his outer environment, but it begins to emerge more and more after he leaves this environment and starts to evaluate his understandings. “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, 1996, pp. 306-7). Careful use of language also helps the reader understand the progress being made in each characters’ journey toward self-awareness. Huck’s maturity is revealed when he reassesses his previous thoughts regarding the sophisticated behavior of his friend Tom Sawyer. “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, 2002, pp. 224-25). Although he recognizes that Tom has had all the benefits of proper society and upbringing, Huck also realizes that Tom is very immature because he refuses to put his talents to good use. This reveals Huck’s growing sense of social responsibility. At the same time, his choice of language is more sophisticated and insightful than his earlier statements. Emma makes a more open acknowledgment of her growth when she admits her errors in trying to manipulate her friends’ lives. She accepts that 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" (Austen, 1984, p. 137). She is "quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more" (Austen, 1984, p. 137). This is very different from the prideful confidence she has at the beginning of the story. When he finishes the painting of his crucified Jewish mother, 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, 1996, p. 312). This final thought illustrates the degree to which Asher is still unresolved in his perceptions yet more self-aware than he had been at the beginning. Finally, each story’s setting helps to track each character’s path of self-enlightenment. Huck’s story is set upon the wide and often mysterious Mississippi River during a time period in which society was strict in its expectations for children yet lenient in allowing them to roam freely. Although Huck essentially raises himself, he remains expected to “wear proper clothes” and “stop smoking.” Emma’s life is very sheltered and safe, yet she feels she is intimately in control of the world around her. As a result, she starts taking control of her friends’ lives. It is not until her own actions begin to prick against her ignored inner feelings that Emma begins to realize her own foolishness. This is revealed when Harriet confesses she’s in love with Mr. Knightley. “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, 1984, p. 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 foreign 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, 1996, p. 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 drifting down the Mississippi, 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, discovered in the isolated setting of Emma and the socially isolated personality of Asher, but that they were able to is demonstrated to the reader through the use of subtle yet distinct literary elements such as more insightful language that provide clues to what the character is thinking, seeing or reacting to. References Austen, Jane. (1984). Emma. New York: Bantam Classics; Reissue edition. Potok, Chiam. (August 27, 1996). My Name is Asher Lev . New York: Bantam Classics; Reissue edition. Twain, Mark. (2002). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. G. Cardwell, J. Seelye. New York: Penguin Classics. Read More