Huck Finn and Intruder in the Dust
Mark Twain and William Faulkner write completely different ways than each other. One is a very humorous writer that brings up many issues most people would never bring up. He fills his works with social satire and makes fun of all different types of writing from almost every era before his time. Mark Twain criticizes hypocrites, racists, aristocrats and any other category of person. The other of the two is unlike any other; his unconscious writing is full of information about the conflicts in the south at a trying time period. He tells his novels from so many different points of view and ties it all into one story. Although the stream-of-conscience writing he did is hard to follow it can be deciphered and thoroughly understood and is now greatly respected. The two had very different writing styles but wrote about the same problems from the south and what was affected. Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and William Faulkner in Intruder in the Dust show that racism and stereotyping can blind people to the truth. Racial stereotyping causes groups of white people to accuse a black man of murder without knowing the facts. Jim, a black slave, is accused of murdering Huck Finn, a white orphan, by Huck's guardians. Jim dec
ides to leave town and escape from slavery so he will have a better chance to free his family. The same night Huck eludes his abusive father for fear of his safety. Both he and Huck are in terrible situations that they feel they need to get out of for their own good. Jim is going to be sold down river to New Orleans for eight hundred dollars and Huck is trapped in his father's cabin where he is taking on physical, emotional and mental abuse. Finn fakes his death with and elaborate plan and leaves town at the same time Jim escapes his plantation and makes his way to Jackson's island where he meets Huck for the first time. Huck asks, "...how long you been on the island, Jim?...I come heah de night arter you's killed"(Twain 52). The townspeople and Huck's guardians believe that because they have both disappeared on the same night that Jim is responsible for Huck's death and has ran because he knows he will be lynched. All of the accusations are of course, false and made with little or no evidence of Jim being the culprit. The whole town is searching for Jim with no luck. He becomes a wanted man up and down the Mississippi river and must hide from others for not only being an escaped slave but also a murder suspect. "All moral perceptions are acquired by the influences around us" (Aspiz pg.366). The townspeople and Huck's guardians are blinded by racism and influenced by bigotry which distorts their logical thinking causing them to place all of the blame on Jim. In Intruder, Lucas Beauchamp experiences unjust accusations as well. Lucas, a calm and intractable man who means no harm to anyone is caught in a very bad situation when two twisted business men are in too deep with their own scandals. He is set up for the murder of a timber salesman named Vinson Gowrie when he is found standing over Vinson's lifeless body with a gun in his hand. "Then He came back through the Square late that Saturday afternoon...and He heard that Lucas had killed Vinson Gowrie..." (Faulkner 27). There is no re
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1347
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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