Huckleberry Finn

1
Huckleberry Finn

• Moral Conflict
• Huckleberry Finn is a book of mine where a sound
  heart and a deformed conscience come into
  collision and conscience suffers defeat.
• Mark Twain

2
Moral Conflict

• Throughout the novel, Huck is troubled by the
  tensions between what society tells him is right
  and his own sense of morality his conscience.
• If I had a yaller dog that didnt know no more
  than a persons conscience does I would pison
  him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a
  persons insides, and yet aint no good, nohow.
• I warnt feeling so brash as I was before, but
  kind of ornery, and humble and to blame, somehow-
  though I hadnt done nothing. But thats always
  the way it dont make no difference whether you
  do right or wrong, a persons conscience aint
  got no sense and just goes for him anyway.

3
Moral Conflict

• External conflicts are struggles between
  characters who have different goals or between a
  character and forces of nature.
• Internal conflicts are psychological struggles
  that characters experience when they are unhappy
  or face difficult decisions.
• Are moral conflicts external or internal?

4
Moral Conflict

• Hucks sense of morality seems quite flexible.
• He lies on occasion and thinks an occasional
  stretcher is ok, but he believes his word is
  his bond.
• He hates the rules imposed by Widow Douglas and
  Miss Watson, but he follows them.
• When he breaks rules, and even the law, sometimes
  he feels guilty, sometimes not.
• He cant make up his mind about Jim to turn in
  his friend (and bring certain harm to him) or to
  go to hell for helping Jim escape.

5
Moral Conflict

• Is Huck at all times a rebel or does he sometimes
  go along to get along?
• Does his doing the right thing ever clash with
  what society tells him is right?
• How does Huck deal with these tensions?

6
Moral Conflict

• To earn participation points for this lecture,
  relate Hucks moral conflicts to your one of your
  own.
• Write a paragraph describing a time in your life
  when you were confronted with moral conflict a
  choice between what your conscience told you was
  right and what society (friends, parents,
  teachers) told you was right.
• Consider the following Was it easy to decide?
  Was it easy to tell what the right thing was?
  How did you feel after you decided?