To lie or not to lie

The following writing is in response to this passage from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

“I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind , and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to” (Twain, 204-205).

           

            Huckleberry Finn’s (Huck) morality and conscious is constantly developing throughout his whole adventure on the raft. Most people believe that Huck is a bad child. He hangs out with Tom Sawyer who is always getting into every kind of mischief he can. Plus he defies the widow most any chance he gets. This belief is one that is a product of misunderstanding Huck as a character. I believe that Huck does most of these things either out of boredom or because he has spent so much time in his life pretending to be something he isn’t, that lying and things of that nature come easy. Almost as if lying and being a bad child was the easy way out for him.

            The adventures he has with Tom Sawyer and the gang at the beginning of the story are evidence of this. He wants to find an escape from the civilized person the widow is trying to make him become so he joins this make-believe band of robbers to do so. Once he realizes that everything Tom says to him, is essentially a lie or something he pretends to be true in Tom’s own head, Huck quits the gang along with all its other members. These are just a couple examples where Huck uses lies to because it is easy. He can lie about his identity by playing all these roles or defying the widow but I believe that deep down, Huck is a genuinely good kid that is misunderstood in some sense.

            Huck first realizes his own goodness in himself upon being an outsider looking in at the deceitfulness of the King and the Duke. This comes out during his conversation with Mary Jane over his plot to expose the Kind and the Duke for the frauds they are. Upon Huck thinking to himself about what his next steps should be, this thought comes to his mind, “here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly safer than a lie” (Twain, 205). This statement to me is essentially the culmination of all the moral dilemmas that have been going the Huck’s head throughout his journey. At this moment, Huck acknowledges two things: the first being that lying is actually a bad thing, the second being that contrary to how he usually thought the truth not only better but safer! Now the idea of the truth being safer is important because Huck told lies to get out of every situation because it was convenient, easy, or safe. He even goes further to say that the truth is “kind of strange and unregular” (Twain, 205). Providing more evidence that lying was something that was normal and natural to Huck, like it is his preferred way of communicating with other people. Here, he recognizes that the truth will provide these same results and decides take a risk. He even goes as far as to compare telling the truth as “setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go” (Twain, 205).

            This passage shows the maturation process of Huck coming close to its end. He is tired of lying to people and living his life as one big masquerade, a big show for everyone to watch and be in awe of. Even after analyzing this passage, I still am unsure what makes Huck lie throughout the book. I understand some of it is out of necessity to protect Jim, but wouldn’t it have been easier to just tell the truth about Jim and turn him in? This brings me back to my original point of lying because it’s convenient and easy. Are those really the reasons or is more a nurture argument? Everyone around him lies all the way from Pap to the widow, so is he just a product of his environment? To me, this is the biggest dilemma when it comes to Huck. Where does his sense of right and wrong come from and does he really even a sense of it? Is the slave society he lives in the reason why the lines are so blurred for him? Questions like these are what make this book so intriguing and why it’s one of the greatest books in American Literature.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Haper & Brothers, 1896. Print.