journal 12

Nika Bogoslovsky
1/23/08
Twain

Quote: "'All right, then, I'll go to hell'-and tore it up."

Summary: This quote comes from chapter 31 when Huck is struggling with the rights and wrongs about sending Miss Watson a letter to inform her where her slave, Jim, is. He write the letter, is about to send it, but thinks back to the person Jim has become to him and decides to tear up the letter.

Response: Huck really believes he's doing the right thing by writing Miss Watson about the whereabouts of her slave, Jim. He even goesn on to talk about how much better her feels, how light his heart is that he's written this letter. But then he goes into this very real, very pivital memories of Jim and how human he actually is and then tears up the letter. It's very weird the affect Twain's writing has in this chapter because even though I know that sending the letter to Miss Watson would be bad, I really feel for Huck and his struggle between right and wrong. At one point, I really believed he should send the letter and found myself making excuses that Miss Watson would protect Jim but then I had to bring myself to realization and admit that if it were really life, Jim would be savagely penalized. From a 2008 perspective, this whole scene is ironic because what Huck thinks is right is actually wrong. I feel sorry for Huck when he believes he's going to hell because what he's actually done is help save a man, which would send him to heaven. He actually does the right thing by supposidley breaking all the "wrong things".