Huckleberry Finn, Emma, My Name Essay

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Huckleberry Finn's violent, alcoholic father, after Finn escapes from the Widow, is an extremely negative paternal force of socialization. Finn, rather than be integrated into society like Emma, must leave society and find his own values, rather than the hypocritical values imposed upon him by others. The most fundamental of these values are his friendship with Jim, an escaped Black slave, who is his truest friend in the novel. Jim follows Huckleberry Finn everywhere, and Finn saves his life on several occasions by lying. Huck feels guilty because he has been taught this is 'stealing' another person's property, because Jim is 'owned' but Huck's natural humanity tells him otherwise. Unlike Emma's natural, ungoverned impulses, which led her to play with the fates of others, Huck's natural inclinations are the best part of his character, unlike his friend Tom Sawyer who is more socialized in morals and books (the sort of books which Emma ignored at her peril). Tom actually torments Jim, when Jim has been captured by the authorities as a runaway, by trying to make the man's life similar to that of his favorite adventure novels. Huckleberry Finn's maturity comes with leaving behind Tom Sawyer at the end of the novel, and heading out away from society into the ungoverned territories of the American West.

My Name is Asher Lev also tells the protagonist's story in the first person, but with less irony. Asher Lev's story is more of a tragedy -- he loves his Hasidic community, but cannot quite fit in, because his fundamental nature requires him to become an artist. Society is not corrupt, as it is in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but the individual, to find his true self, must reject his upbringing and original society, unlike Austen's Emma. Asher Lev does encounter a number of artists who are able to balance their art with their Jewish faith, but Asher Lev's destiny is to find a more radical path. Asher Lev also does not drop out of society like Huck, but enters a new society.

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Potok, unlike Twain, who sees society as essentially corrupt, and unlike Austen, who sees social influence as positive, refuses to provide a singular answer as to the degree to which the individual has a social responsibility to stifle his or her own moral impulses to preserve harmony. Potok also suggests it is impossible to drop out of society, rather one finds a new society -- in Asher Lev's case, the society of artists.

All three individuals are young people, seeking to establish a particular identity that will carry them through adulthood. Emma must make this new identity harmonious with society, to please both the ironic voice of the narrator, as well as Mr. Knightly. Twain's character tells his own story, in his own voice, with less authorial distance, and when Twain ironically satirizes Huck it is only because Huck cannot see how much more compassionate and moral when he show respect towards Jim. In contrast to respectable people who see Jim as property or a boyhood plaything, Huck says he cannot turn Jim in and will go to hell for it, if that is what religion dictates. Finally, with less irony in the narrative first-person voice, Chaim Potok uses the persona of Asher Lev to tell a tale of a young man who does not see his society as bad (nor does his creator) but whose individual orientation makes his emerging self in fundamental conflict with the social places and identities open to an individual within the Hasidic world to which he….....

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