Mark Twain’s “The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn”
This book features the story of a young boy’s adventure. It entails the changed lifestyle of Huck who has to live a respectable life so as to qualify to join the gang group of a man named Tom. His life is good but when his drunkard father comes to town demanding his money, things change for him. Nevertheless, a widow makes effort to gain custody of the boy with the help of a judge (Twain, p.13). Their efforts are however interjected by another judge who believes that the custody of the boy should be accorded to his biological father. The judge goes to the extent of taking the boy’s father in his own home to help him reform his drinking problem. Meanwhile, the boy stays with the widow who educates him to ensure he becomes enlightened. Due to the ill habits of the father, the judge kicks him out of his house. The father then decides to visit the house of the widow during which he harassed the boy. It is during such events that the man is banned from visiting the boy again. As a result of the ban, the father kidnapped his son and hid him in a cabin near a river in St. Petersburg. During his stay at the cabin, the boy suffers a great deal from his father’s beating.
Huck decides to run away and makes certain that his father will never look for him ever again (Twain, p. 21). He does this by killing a pig and spreading its blood to indicate his death. On running away, he goes to stay at an island where he met Jim who becomes his companion for a while. The two had run away from their pursuits. During his stay on the island, Huck and Jim got a report that people including the owner of the island suspected that he was staying there and so they left the island. They took off in a raft to a faraway land. On their way, they met with robbers but managed to escape from them. In addition, they encountered some men who were looking for some of the slaves who had escaped. It is during this encounter that Huck lied that in the boat was his father who was suffering from a deadly and infectious disease called smallpox (Twain, p. 40). The men, scared of the illness, gave them some money and left them alone. The two managed to rescue some men who had been captured. This act later became the path to their freedom. However, their freedom does not come so easily because, at some point, Tom was shot forcing Huck to forsake his freedom to take care of him. Their freedom was at last gained when they learned that both Huck’s father and Jim’s master had died (Twain, p. 50).
Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”
This is an allegory that was used by the famous philosopher named Plato from Greece. His philosophical work was intended to show the nature of man in his need to acquire education so badly. It is a dialogue between Socrates who was Plato’s teacher and the brother to Plato. In the story, Plato uses some imaginative human beings who are locked in the cave for a long time but are now exposed to an open wall (Plato, p. 37). Plato compares these shadows seen by the prisoners to a prisoner who is on the verge of gaining freedom. He then further explains this fact by the use of the philosopher whose thoughts are not liberated, unlike the prisoners after gaining freedom from a cave. But the shadows they see confirm they’re being very far from reality. He also explains that a philosopher is able to see reality and differentiate it, unlike the prisoners who saw shadows and compared them to reality. The scenario inside the cave is meant to show that not everything people take to be real is actually real. Due to some echoes heard at the pathway of the cave as well as the reflections of the fire behind them, the prisoners assume that the shadows are real things.
Interconnection between the Two Stories
The two stories interconnect in a number of ways. Both of them feature stories of some people who are held hostage in one way or another and are all desperately longing for their freedom. In “The Adventure of Huckleberry”, the writer shows Huck and Jim as two characters whose freedom is a major concern and it is revealed through a journey. On the other hand, in Plato’s “the Allegory of the Cave”, the writer uses the prisoners in the cave who really need freedom (Plato, p. 23). Both the victims cannot see the reality of how to gain their freedom because it is a right that was denied from them since their childhood (Twain, p. 56). Huck is running away from his father’s oppression while Jim is from his oppressive master. On the other hand, the prisoners in the cave were also denied their freedom since childhood. In both stories, it is ironic that after gaining freedom, the captives are not able to see reality. For example, the two friends still remained in captivity because on the island they were physically free but, in their mind,, they were not. That is why they again had to flee from the island.
The same thing happened with the prisoner in the cave who after being removed from the cave would blame the one who freed him because of the pains he experienced from the light. He still felt that going back to the cave is the way out of his pain. In addition, prisoners in the cave could not recognize the actual things they saw while in the cave (Plato, p. 45). Huck and Jim could also not recognize that even on the island total freedom was not guaranteed. Plato’s act of seeing the prisoner as a better man after seeing the light – he could see the reality – can be compared to the point at which Huck decided not to return to his aunt and instead moved west after learning of his father’s death. In addition, Plato claims that a free prisoner from the cave can be capable of killing the one who frees him due to the effect he encountered from the light. This can be compared to the reaction that Jim showed when Tom revealed to him that he had been free for a long time only that he had to use him for his own benefits (Twain, p. 50).
Conclusion
Freedom and reality are two inter-related situations. This is because for one to be free from any captive situation, he or she must see reality. For example, the man taken from the cave had to be shown the light to be able to see reality. Also, it was at the end of the story that Jim and Huck realize they were set free a long time ago. This is because Jim’s master had written a letter to set him free before he died. Likewise, Huck’s father had died a long time ago and Huck actually saw the body but because he could not recognize it, the reality of the matter did not hit him.
Works Cited
- Twain, Mark. The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Canada: Echo Library, 1925.
- Plato. The Allegory of the Cave. Amazon: Createspace, 2010.