Essay Example on Huck's Ordinary Life: Fear, Fight & Flight

Fear refers to a natural and powerful emotion that it involves biochemical reactions. Fear tends to alert one when faced by danger, threats that can either be psychological or in a physical form. Also, fears can base on imaginations, such as anxiety disorders, phobias, and even panic disorders. Humans tend to respond to fear-based on fight or flight, as it is evidenced in the story outline.

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The author begins the story when Huck's ordinary life turns into a mess when Huck`s drunken father reappears in town and demands full custody of Huck (McCoy, 2017). After a while, Huck's father goes back to the old ways of drinking and harassing his son, who is Huck. Pap learns about the widow's attempt to make him a better man, and he kidnaps Huck and throws into a cabin near a river. Pap continued with this habit of beating up Huck whenever one came home drunk. Huck decides to plan to escape this ordeal, and one chooses the flight option after one got tired of one's father's habit of beating up Huck whenever one came home drunk (Spencer, 2017). Huck plans to escape by faking one's death. Huck decides to kill a pig and spread its blood all over the cabin. Huck escapes and hides over the Mississippi River as one watches the people search for the body. Huck decided to spend some days on the island; later on, one meets up with Jim, a slave belonging to Miss Watson. Jim decided to run because one feared for one's life after one learned that Miss Watson wanted to sell one as a slave to a plantation found down the river (Spencer, 2017). Huck and Jim decide to leave the island after learning that a reward had been offered for Jim's capture and that a woman's husband had seen smoke rising at the island where Huck and Jim lived.

The human condition tends to give one a notion about what being "human" entails and how the human conditions affect one. The human conditions are either based on positive or negative aspects that include; birth, emotions, conflicts, morality, and even violence, hypocrisy, guilt, empathy. The author shows that some of the characters in the story pretend to be helpful, but on the other hand, they are slave owners and also discriminate against African Americans. Also, the author illustrates that many wrongdoings and crime in that society go unpunished, but shouting insults led to execution practices (Twain, 2010). The society pretends to be well aware of Huck's needs, such as a father figure. The new judge gives custody to Pap, Hucks's father (Twain, 2010). Even though Pap does not care about Huck and continues to go on one's daily drinking spree and later on locking Huck on the cabin and beating up Huck severely until one decides to escape because Huck has a feeling that one's father would kill him. Huck feels empathy and puts one's self in someone's situation. It is evidenced when Huck worries about the thieves they abandoned on the shipwreck with Jim, and this drives them to go and help them (Spencer, 2017). Also, Huck understands and feels for Jim since Jim feels homesick, and that one misses one's wife and children. Stanton rules out that women in society are discriminated against in society. Stanton is one of the leading figures in advocating for human rights (Thomas, 2016). Women in the past were not allowed to either vote, get educated, have financial independence, or even have access to create one's bank account (Thomas, 2016). Canton formed movements in the United States to passionately fight women's inequality in society. One underwent hardships and humiliations, but this did not deny one the right to continue fighting, because she was a girl when she, later on, grew up one met with other women right activists to fight for women rights that included; divorce laws, legal rights for women and also encouraging self-determination among women (Thomas, 2016). Even though one fought for human rights, one died at a younger age before the women were granted the right to fight, but one still serves as a compelling inspiration to the women.

The author bases on the Civil War era around the Mississippi River where the river symbolizes a place where to get solace, peace, and a getaway place from the society. Society is full of violence, acts of hypocrisy, and also discrimination (Twain, 2010). The author uses the Mississippi river as a paradise ground where one can freely enjoy life, intermingle freely. It is evidenced between Jim and Huck, when they forget all their troubles and enjoy life by fishing, laughing, and other activities. The father figure Pap symbolizes society. Pap is abusive and violent and tends to beat up Huck and lock him up in the cabin. Huck escapes his father's discrimination by escaping towards the Mississippi River, which is a paradise ground (Twain, 2010). Huck meets Jim, who tends to give one lesson regarding life and also stories about the wild and animals too. Then the author tries to bring out corruption, violence, and discrimination in the society, where slaves were sold out to work on plantations.

Conclusion

The author tries to forecast the oppression that African Americans underwent in the past. Society is full of anger, violence, discrimination, inequality, and also acts of hypocrisy. The characters in the story respond to fear by either fight or flight. In the case of Huck and Jim, both responded to fear by "flight" that is they chose to run ours to their paradise hideout, which is the island. Unlike the case of Stanton one chose to fight for the women rights even though one was young and that women faced gender

References

McCoy. (2017). "Fiction of law and custom": Personhood under jurisdictional law and social codes in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson. The Mark Twain Annual, 15(1), 192. https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.15.1.0192

Spencer. (2017). "A fiction of law and custom": Mark Twain's interrogation of white privilege in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Mark Twain Annual, 15(1), 126. https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.15.1.0126

Thomas, T. A. (2016). Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the feminist foundations of family law. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814783047.001.0001Twain, M. (2010). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain Library.