Reality Bites

A detailed Summary of Reality Bites

Why The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be banned

A 16-year-old young man watches Jerry Springer as the hostile Ku Klux Klan shout racial slurs at African-Americans in the audience. His mother walks in the room, snatches the remote control all tells him he is not to watch such shows; then, she changes the channel to CNN and watches a black farmer beat a white landowner over a land dispute in Africa. However, as much as the mother tries to cover her sons' eyes and ears, she cannot shelter her son from reality forever because no matter what channel-on television or in life-reality will blow the roof of the shelter that she continues to construct. Similarly, the board of education in California tries to shelter their students as they continue to ban the controversial novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. In his satire, Twain provides students with American History when he exposes the way his society treats African-Americans prior to the Civil War. Cosmopolitan California fears this exposure as the readers!

learn about the brutal real world. Comparatively, students learn from Huck's trials and tribulations about their own true morals. Thus, Huck Finn should not be banned from a high

Finally, through the trials and tribulations that each character undergoes, the reader learns about his or her own morals. Huck learns of Jim's enslavement as the novel closes. Revealing the location of Jim, Huck writes a letter to Miss Watson; then, Huck's conscience taunts him as he remembers how much he and Jim have been through, "I was trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell'-and tore it up." (Page 249-250) As he listens to his conscience, Huck decides to reject society. The reader learns that sometimes one must be a renegade because society might not always be right. Most importantly, Huck teaches the most valuable lesson one can live by: "Be true to yourself".

s novel educate the students culturally, realistically and morally in their minds, hearts, and spirits.

Next, Twain exposes how greed can corrupt a person while gullibility can hurt another. The rapacious duke and dauphin learn that an opulent man by the name of Peter Wilks died and that one of his last wishes was to see William, his beloved brother. The mischievous dauphin proposes a plan to pose as William Wilks in order to inherit the brothers fortune; they show up at the funeral and trick the gullible Wilks family and community. As the "lamentable" duke and dauphin receive sympathy from the townsmen Huck thinks, "Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."(Page 191) In total disgust, Huck understands that humans can be cruel to one another. The readers learn that not everyone is trustworthy as Twain uses the "rapscallions" to show how, in the real world, people will take advantage of others for personal gains.

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Earlier in the story, Huck faces a similar internal conflict that gives the reader's morals a chance to develop. After lying to two white men to keep Jim out of slavery, Huck contemplates on the morality of his decision, "Then I though a minute, and says to myself, hold on, s'pose you'd a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad-I'd feel just the same way I do now."(Page 108) Thereafter, Huck decides to do what is most convenient. Huck, again, rejects society and decides to do what feels right to him. The reader learns that, most times, doing what is right usually comes hand in hand with doing what feels right.

Throughout the novel, Twain also evokes the acrimonious real world

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Approximate Word count = 1782
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels