Huckleberry Finn Identity

The ending of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is both controversial and thought provoking. Many see Edna Pontellier’s suicide as the final stage of her “awakening”, and the only way that she will ever be able to truly be free. Edna’s suicide, however, is nothing more than her final attempt to escape from her life. Edna Pontellier’s life has become too much for her to handle, and by committing suicide she is simply escaping the oppression she feels from her marriage, the suppression she feels from her children, and the failure of her relationship with Robert.

Edna's feelings of despondency fade as the sea's spell reaches out for her again. The narrator points out that "[the] voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in

     On Huck and Jim’s journey to Cairo, Jim begins to speak about when he is free he will go and find his children and take them from the slave owner. This rubbed Huck the wrong way; his standards of Jim had been lowered because, from Huck’s point of view, why would Jim steal his children away from a man who has done nothing to him? Huck’s conscience began to come into play and he had made up his mind: He was going to turn Jim in when they reach shore. He was sure of it until Jim began to sweet talk Huck, telling him that Huck was the only white man that had ever kept a promise to him. This comment went directly to Huck’s heart; he could not possibly

Due this conflict with her husband, Edna moves closer to the sin of adultery. She begins to have a passionate relationship with a man named Robert Lebrun. He devotes himself to being Edna’s swim teacher. Edna has the courage to go into the ocean and learn how to swim, which can also represent the courage to break the role of a devoted wife and begin an affair with a younger man. During the beginning of her awakening, “The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude”(13).The sea seems to symblolize Edna’s empowerment,and control over her own body as she has courage to swim. However, it is also where Edna takes her own life because her desires will never truly be fulfilled. Her love affair with Robert tempts her to give her into her own sexuality and desires which begins in the sea. This goes against women submissive role in

She is moved by music. During that summer Edna sketches to find an artistic side to herself. She needs an outlet to express who she is. Edna feels that art is important and adds meaning to her life. After the summer is over and they are back to the city and Edna is a changed woman. She makes many steps towards independence. She stops holding "Tuesday socials", she sends her children to live in the country with their grandparents, she refuses to travel abroad with her husband, she moves out of the Lebrun house on Esplanade Street, and to earn money, she starts selling her sketches and betting the horses. She also starts a relationship with another man Alcee Arobin. He meant nothing to her emotionally but she used him for sexual pleasure. Edna evolved above her peers she did not believe that sexuality and motherhood had to be linked. The last step of her "awakening" is the realization that she can not fulfill her life in a society that will not allow her to be a person and a mother. Edna commits suicide in the ocean at Grand Isle.

    One theme apparent in Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, is the consequence of solitude when independence is chosen over conformity. The novel's protagonist, Edna Pontellier, is faced with this consequence after she embarks on a journey of self-discovery. "As Edna's ability to express herself grows, the number of people who can understand her newfound language shrinks" (Ward 3). Edna's awakening from a conforming, Victorian wife and mother, into an emotional and sexual woman takes place through the use of self-expression in three forms: emotional language, art, and physical passion.

He writes a letter explaining the situation to Miss. Watson, so that Jim could go back to being a slave for her. Instead however he just rips the letter stating that he will just have to go to hell. Back then it was illegal to help a runaway slave, and Huck was doing the wrong thing. Huck has grown to love Jim and wants him to be a free person. He helps break Jim out of the barn that he was being kept in, and understands the moral of right and wrong according to today’s standards. Through all of the adventures that Huck and Jim have shared, Huck's character has grown from being a reckless, wild boy, to one who understands the things that actually matter. Through it all Huck has made friends, and a new family on his adventures with

Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, introduces a “solitary soul” who fights for her identity in a society where statuses are defined and given. Edna Pontellier’s path to her awakened self is not a program, but rather a process that unfortunately results in death. Although societal influences limit the boundary for her feminine position, her inner struggle for freedom prompts her actions to appear impulsively sporadic and self-destructive in the midst of domesticity. Once she sampled the thrill and fear created by the ocean’s waves, she abandons her motherly duties, publically defies her husband, and chases a forbidden romance with Robert Lebrun. When that endeavor unexpectedly fails, she becomes devastated.

Huck feels alone and abandoned. Huck’s past has failed to make him an abusive and mean person, it hasn’t influenced him to believe in racism or a doomed government. And despite his crummey experiences with guardianship, he still allows Jim into his

Edna has been rebuffed by Robert who, having returned to New Orleans, and after a passionate kiss, on the verge of sexual and emotional climax, leaves her with a note that says simply “Good-by – because I love you” (124). He refuses complicity in her downfall on behalf of a dream. Edna, on the other hand, does not know how to wake from it. It is under the influence of the “voice of the sea” (16) that Edna first began to realize “her position in the universe as a human being,” and, more importantly for us, “to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (16). For all her angst, it was not until her experiences in Grand Isle that her consciousness became irrevocably divided into inward and outward states; her love of Robert, the music of Mlle Reisz, and the sea. The sea is Edna’s mirror: it is “seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation” (16). Like the sea, Edna is a fluid passion, inarticulate, constantly merging, warping, and pouring apart, a perpetual flux of unity, but fundamentally incapable of stability. We are told that the sea “speaks to the soul” (16), that its touch is “sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace” (16), and this lulling, soft, unindividuated enclosure is the only one that Edna can finally take solace in, the only possible outward manifestation of her internal oblivion. She stands on the shore, preparing to wade out into her destiny, noting how, even at this late point, “she felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known” (127). She begins to swim as Robert taught her, going “on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing it had no beginning and no end” (127), until “exhaustion was pressing upon

Alone on their raft, they do not have to answer to anyone. As Huck drifts down the river, he learns that freedom comes with great responsibility: the responsibility to decide for yourself how to be a good, moral person. Their vehicle of choice is a raft: something that can barely be steered and that only goes as fast as the river it's on. But the raft ends up being a kind of no-man's land that seems to operate under different laws than solid ground. In a way, it provides a space for Huck and Jim to get to know each other man-to-man rather than master-to-slave. As Huck says, "we… let her [the raft] float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of

Huck means to write a letter to Miss Watson to tell her how Jim has escaped, and now is captured by someone else. He knows that this will lead to severe punishment for Jim, and he will probably be sold anyways. He tries to convince himself that this is the right thing to do but he cannot: “But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind” (213). Huck knows that society tells him that he should not be compassionate towards Jim, but he cannot help it. Through the time they have spent together, Huck and Jim have developed a relationship that Huck cannot ignore.

Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening details the endeavors of heroine Edna Pontellier to cope with the realization that she is not, nor can she ever be, the woman she wants to be. Edna has settled for less. She is married for all the wrong reasons, saddled with the burden of motherhood, and trapped by social roles that would never release her. The passage below is only one of the many tender and exquisitely sensory passages that reveal Edna’s soul to the reader.

Throughout the story and his life Huck is told what to believe and what’s right by the Widow Douglas, Pap, and even Jim. One of the major internal conflicts he has when balancing all he has been told to believe with his own feelings, is on the topic of Jim and whether to grant his freedom or not. Huck doubts his decision of helping Jim many times on the trip but he finally makes his own decision about how he feels for Jim when he’s about to send a letter to the Widow. Huck soon confuses himself because he was “the best friend old Jim ever had in the world” (217) and“couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him” (216) and doesn’t understand why he should betray him. Huck finally “got to decide, forever, betwixt two things” and he chose for himself not for the widow or pap but for what he has faith

He decided that he didn’t care what society thought was right, and that staying true to Jim was the best thing to do. “I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right…Then I thought for a minute, and says to myself hold n; s’pose you’d ‘a’ done right and give Jim up, would’ve you felt better than what you do now? No says I, I’d feel bad…Well, then says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong.” (p. 95) His spirit is free and uncorrupted by the prejudices of society. By listening to his heart, Huck makes a good choice. He still takes responsibility for his own actions although not according to the standards put on him, but by those he puts on himself. He is no longer as selfish, as he becomes more mature he learns to respect other peoples’ feelings and needs. Even though he doesn’t want to live in their world, Huck still has feelings for the people he meets and cares for.