Huck Finn Essay Exam 1 (1-23)

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there are many moral dilemmas that Huck and his friends must go through. The definition of a moral dilemma is a situation or conflict that has no right or wrong answer to the problem. One moral dilemma that Huck has to face is him lying about his death. This situation is a moral dilemma because he thinks it is a good idea because it helps him run away from his father who beats him. But on the other hand people think it is bad because now he is gone and they are all wondering why someone would do that to him.

To Huck it seems like a good idea because he is thinking about running away but he didn’t think that he would get caught so he needed a plan to get away with it. He thought about it and made a plan. He ripped his hair out and put it on the axe then put the pigs blood all over the place and people really thought that he was dead and someone took him and buried him or something.

In the other peoples thought they are thinking how he got kidnapped in the first place because they didn’t know where he was hiding. Pap took him to a little beat down shack where no one would even look for him there. The second thing that went through the other peoples mind was who killed him. At first everyone thinks that is was pap because they know that pap is gone too so they assume he was with Huck. When all the people go to look for him when they notice that he is gone someone says “Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he’s washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water’s edge. I hope so, anyway.” So far in the book the family and friends of Huck haven’t found out that Huck is lying and that he is still alive. Huck’s decision to lie was very wise and smart the way he planned it out but in the long run it could catch up with him and he could get seriously injured.

I believed Jim was a very important key in his escape because even though Jim knew that Huck was running away and faked his own death he still kept it a secret. That is a lot of pressure to hold something that big in so I would have given Jim props for it.