Morality as Defined by Mark Twain - Research Paper Example

Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a Negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the children apart … [only] by their clothes. Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson Morality as Defined by Mark Twain How does one define morality? Is it the standards set by society or is it something that goes deeper than mere social customs to define one’s individual behavior? What happens to the individual who determines for himself whether to adhere to the social custom or the deeper internal sense when these things come into conflict? Although there are not always clear distinctions made between social morality and individual morality, there are frequently situations one encounters in life where personal feelings of justice or fair play prompt one to react against the expectations of social order. When these occasions occur, the individual finds oneself discovering contention within the self as they struggle to justify socially directed actions with personal interpretation. When these events occur, they force the questioning of personal beliefs and one’s position within society contributing to the definition of personal identity. These are some of the questions Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) addresses in his popular novels such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Within these two stories, Twain demonstrates the gross discrepancies between the ‘civilized’ concepts of morality as compared to actual social behavior and the ‘natural’ rules discovered by the individual through his primary characters, Huck and Hank respectively. Both The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court are considered frame stories in which a number of smaller short stories or vignettes are linked together by an underlying ‘frame.’ The frame of Huckleberry Finn is the structure of a boy’s trip down the Mississippi River with an escaped slave. As the pair travels downriver, they come into contact with numerous unique individuals, such as Mr. & Mrs. Phelps, the Duke and Dauphin and the Grangerfords. In each situation he finds himself in, Huck faces a crisis of decision where he must either choose to do what he’s been taught is right by civilized society or to do what he feels in his heart is the right thing to do. As he floats down the river, he has the opportunity to reflect on the choices he’s made and the reasons he’s made them, developing his own sense of morality free and different from what he’s been taught. The frame of Connecticut Yankee is somewhat more complicated as there is first the structure of the American tourist and his encounter with a mysterious stranger and his manuscript, discovering at the end that this stranger is also the main character, Hank. However, there is also the frame of King Arthur’s court to which Hank continues to return for various reasons throughout the story. From this perspective, Hank’s life in England in modern times can be seen as a vignette much like Huck’s experience in St. Petersburg is a vignette that launches him into the framing element. For both characters, these early experiences are key to the way in which they interpret the worlds in which they find themselves, whether it is in the center of a strange, meaningless feud in an otherwise largely familiar world or in the center of a war using modern technology against an army of ancients. For each character, these conflicts force consideration of individual morals in which no answer is necessarily the ‘right’ answer but some answer must be reached. For both main characters, the significant difference between their personal understanding of the world and the understanding of the world in which they are living contributes to their ability to make independent decisions regarding social issues. Presented from the opening words, Huckleberry Finn, understood to be highly uneducated and uncivilized, presents the reader with his understanding of the world around him. Throughout the first chapter, Huck’s backwards ways are compared against the genteel ways of the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. While Huck prefers his “old rags and my sugar-hogshead” (2), admitting that he is “so ignorant and so kind of low-down and ornery” (17), the older ladies insist upon him being dressed decently and gaining some book learning. They spend a great deal of their time trying to teach him the ‘proper’ ways of society, including his manners while in society, his academic subjects and his religious duties. According to the Widow Douglas, Huck “must help other people and do everything I could for other people and look out for them all the time and never think about myself” (17). Many of these same elements can be found in Connecticut Yankee as Hank arrives in 528 England still dressed in his 1800s era American clothing. His clothes seem to cause the greatest amazement among those who see him and they are described to the court by Sir Kay as “garb that was a work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt by human hands … and yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops” (21). Like Huck, Hank finds it necessary to quickly and effectively learn the ways of his new society, but takes a more adult approach to the situation. “I saw that I was just another Robinson Crusoe, cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable, I must do as he did – invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy” (33). While Huck attempts to fit in with his society, Hank is already making plans to bring about change. Through these sequences, Twain builds on his audience’s expectations that society, and all its associated details including education, religion and propriety, is the morally superior choice to living in ignorance and the filth of the wild or ‘natural’ state as it is found in Huck without the ladies’ influence or in the behaviors of the court people in King Arthur’s domain. In the course of their journeys, both Huck and Hank learn to rely more upon the Golden Rule than any rules of the land in order to be at peace within their own hearts. While the courts are willing to throw Huck back to his father despite the better judgment of the townspeople, Jim strives to protect Huck from the ugliness of the world, such as when they discovered Pap’s dead body in the floating house and Jim wouldn’t let Huck look at it. As Huck hears the murderers planning to allow their former partner to drown on the wrecked steamship, he decides it is right and fair to maroon all three men, particularly when he and Jim discover they will need a way off the boat, but then feels guilty about the action and contrives to send someone after them. “I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would ‘a’ done it” (103). This streak of ‘natural’ morality also comes out in Huck as he strives to thwart the schemes of the Duke and Dauphin. This comes into strong focus as he works to protect the Wilkes girls from being cheated by the pair. “Them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but I didn’t see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune” (252). Huck is operating here on his own morality, feeling that because the girls were so friendly, trusting and loving, they should not be taken advantage of by the likes of the Duke and Dauphin. At the same time, he’s reached the conclusion that owning slaves is not moral at all, and goes through his various machinations as a means of protecting Jim from being sold by the scoundrels, actively making himself into the abolitionist he’d previously felt was a bad word to be applied to a person. Hank also works to bring about a better standard of living for mankind. Upon attaining for himself a strong position as the second-hand man to the king and the real power behind the throne, Hank begins to establish organizations, schools, and businesses that will begin to turn the country into something more closely aligned with the world Hank left behind 1300 years in the future. After four years, he comments, “My schools and churches were children four years before; they were grown-up now; my shops of that day were vast factories, now; where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now; where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now” (47). While Huck struggles to learn the ways of the world and his own place in it, Hank seems intuitively aware of the state of the world he finds himself in and actively seeks new ways of introducing his ‘enlightened’ vision into it. Throughout these stories, Mark Twain illustrates again and again how society’s morals are twisted out of place to the point where they have become meaningless mannerisms rather than acted upon beliefs. In demonstrating this difference, Twain begins to paint a picture in which the morality of society is compared unfavorably with the more sincere and heartfelt ‘natural’ morality of the golden rule. However, through Huck and Hank, Twain also recognizes that morality is not a black and white issue. While theft is considered to be always wrong, there are times when theft is justified, or justified to a varying degree. Despotism is largely held to be wrong, but in the hands of a capable and caring individual, there may be times when it can be beneficial. As the reader flows with Huck down the Mississippi River with his trusted friend Jim or travels through the many strange events of the medieval world from the perspective of a nineteenth century man, Twain is able to take his reader from the more common understanding of empty social morality prevalent in his time and encourage a more natural and individualistic ‘natural’ morality of the senses. Works Cited Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1994. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964. Read More