Gothic creative writing piece

        Steve Fleming

The Urge

A dark blanket surrounds him. A faint beam of white, eerie light bleeds through the window from the moon that floats upon the clouds of night. It stares at him, with several eyes of black and white. Its feet awaiting his very touch. It calls to him, in silence. For it can only speak with his touch. He stands, motionless, just smiling at what he loves.  He sits upon the bench, with perfect comfort, as he places his cold and boney fingers on the old worn keys that he knows so well. His fingers move with such grace as he begins to play. It speaks, loud and with glory. It is final, the one we once knew, has been taken. He is gone. 

The year was 1955 and it was the first day of high school for a lonely boy at Grosse Pointe South. His name was Rodney Calsner. He had been eagerly awaiting high school for he longed the freedom it seemed to present. Most of Rodney's time was spent at home, in his study room. Rodney's parents would force him to read and study for most of his day. He would wake up, eat breakfast, read. He would go to school, come home, and read some more. Dinner would come and after he would have to read and study his books until he fell asleep. On nice days Rodney would be able to read out on the porch, but never was he allowed to hang out with the few friends he had. 

As the few first weeks of school go by, Rodney's hopes have clearly diminished. The chance of any form of freedom had not come. His parents still enforce the strict schedule and boundaries on him. Rodney becomes exhausted with the way he is forced to live his life, but just keeps going along. Day after day, Rodney reads more and more, just as he is expected to. At this point Rodney has tried to make friends at school, but can never spend time with them, so they have all faded away. At school he doesn't talk to anybody, not even trying to make friends anymore because he knows it will never last. Rodney now knows that this is his life, and there is nothing he can do to change it.

One day after school, Rodney is on his way out to walk home, when he notices something interesting. There are two large, wooden doors, with brass knobs. The shimmering doorknobs were engraved with mysterious writing and symbols, he could not determine of what language they were. Rodney passes these doors everyday, but this time they came to his attention. One of the doors was slightly open. He had never seen the inside of this room before, and he had this strange urge to go inside. As he walks in side he is instantly engulfed with all the art throughout the room. Something pulls his attention in the corner of his eyes. A spiraling staircase that leads up towards a small balcony. Rodney slowly walks up the staircase. When he gets to the top a sudden strange wave of comfort and power overcomes him. He knows exactly the source of this energy. It is coming from an organ, perfectly placed against the wall at the end of this balcony. Rodney walks towards it, and when he gets to the bench, he feels as if he has no choice but to try to play. He places his fingers upon the keys, and begins the play. Rodney had never played the organ before, but once he started to play, it was as if something had taken over him, and was playing for him. 

The next day, Rodney was thinking about the organ the entire length of the day. He wanted to experience this strange sensation that he got when he played, even that he was tremendously confused on how he knew how to play. Later at night he was at home, waiting for his parents to go to bed. Rodney was craving for the feeling of the keys pressing under his fingertips. He knew that his parents wouldn’t let him play the beloved organ, for it would supposedly distract him from his reading. Rodney waits and waits, until his parents are finally asleep. He ever so slowly opens his window and creeps out. Once he gets to the road he starts running, going faster and faster toward the school. Once he gets there, he opens the door with the key that he stealthily stole from the janitor earlier in the day. He walks in, and step by step gets closer to what he has been waiting for. He gets to the same two, large wooden double doors, opens them, and walks in. Rodney is giddy with excitement, runs up the stairs, and gets that same feeling he did before. He sits down and begins to play.

Every day, for the next couple months, Rodney would sneak out, and go to school and play the organ. Rodney couldn’t resist the urge to play the organ every night.   The urge is so great, it almost isn’t enough. He wishes that he could play the organ all day. 

As the weeks go on, Rodney gets less and less cautious when he sneaks out at night. He starts going out earlier and earlier in the night so he could play longer. He did this to the point that he would sneak out when his parents were still awake. Rodney didn’t worry about it, he thought that they wouldn’t even expect it. But one night, Rodney is trying to sneak out earlier than ever. Rodney climbs out the window and is walking down the street when he hears loud yells of extreme anger.

“RODNEY CALSNER!!! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?! YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE MAGGOT!!”, screams his Mom.

“Leave me alone!”, cries Rodney.

Rodney’s father runs after him, snatches him up, and locks him in his room.

Rodney’s parents have put him under complete lock down. They drop him off at school. They wait for him after school, and once he gets home, he is monitored by them until he is sleep. Just in case he woke up in the middle of the night, they even put bars on his window. Weeks pass, and Rodney’s urge to play the organ has completely overtaken him. All he thinks about is the organ, and the way it’s sound floats through his ears. His grades start to slip. He stays awake all night, thinking. The nights get longer and longer, more torturous, for the urge is ripping Rodney apart. He tries not to think about it, but something, some kind of force is stuck in his head, telling him that he needs to play, he must play. He would begin to draw pictures of the organ, and the scene around it, hundreds at a time. Paper after paper, scattered around his room, on his walls, the same thing. The same scene, him at the bench of the organ, playing. 

Soon it becomes too much for Rodney to consume. He has to do something to fix this. Something so he can play the organ like he did before. His brain is filling with ideas. What can I do to fix this? What is the source of he problem? How do I stop it?! Then it comes to him. He stops, and smiles. Rodney comes to the conclusion that his parents are obviously the only reason why he can’t play his organ. He needs to get rid of them. So he comes up with a plan, that for some strange reason, doesn’t bother his mind or soul one bit. He plans to kill his parents, in cold blood. He doesn’t care how, just as long as it is soon. He walks into the kitchen and sees them both sitting on the couch facing the other way. He grabs a kitchen knife and creeps toward them. He is hovering about them, in perfect silence. His dad turns around, Rodney quickly slices the knife through his neck, like it was nothing. His mom quickly follows with a scream and she suffers the same, a quick slice to the neck. Rodney then just stands there and stares at the pools of blood covering the floor. He drags them outside, puts them in two old trunks, and buries them in the woods. Finally, he is free.

Rodney now goes every night to play his organ. He plays from dusk to dawn, not even sleeping. But he doesn’t need sleep, as long as he has his beloved organ under his fingers. For a few weeks Rodney is in complete happiness, or so he thinks. He is so consumed by the organ that he does not even realize the shortage of food at his home. Rodney is home afternoon and is shuffling through the cabinet’s, desperately searching for food. All he finds is one can of expired pickles. He eats them one by one in overwhelming disgust. He is now very scared, for he has no money to buy food, or take care of himself. He also has no friends to live with because of his time being completely taken over by the organ. Rodney just tries to forget about it, and goes to the school. He plays. What is left of Rodney’s diminishing life completely revolves around the organ. During school he will even skip class and just sit, staring at the organ. 

One dark night, Rodney goes to the school once again. He enter Cleminson Hall just as he always does and goes up the stairs. A dark blanket surrounds him. A faint beam of white, eerie light bleeds through the window from the moon that floats upon the clouds of night. It stares at him, with several eyes of black and white. Its feet awaiting his very touch. It calls to him, in silence. For it can only speak with his touch. He stands, motionless, just smiling at what he loves.  He sits upon the bench, with perfect comfort, as he places his cold and boney fingers on the old worn keys that he knows so well. His fingers move with such grace as he begins to play. It speaks, loud and with glory. It is final, the one we once knew, has been taken. He is gone. 

Three days later, the school was in havoc. Police officers were everywhere, blocking the students away from Cleminson Hall. Something was being carried out, but no one could tell what because there was a large crowd of officers and EMTs surrounding. Whatever it is, it is carried out. Some students start putting together the pieces. Rodney had not been at school the past three days. Now they know, Rodney had died in there. 

Later that night, a small group of students snuck into the school to try to find something in Cleminson to clear up the story. They open the door to Cleminson, look around and see ‘Do Not Cross’ tape by the stairs. The walk up and when they see the organ, they step towards it. Suddenly they get the feeling of a frozen spike shooting down their spine. They can’t help but to stare at the organ with horrible fear. And without question, the keys begin to move, the loud engulfing sound of the organ surrounds them! They he hear sinful laughing of enjoyment fill their ears! They run, run faster than ever, and never speak of that moment again. 

POE ESSAY

Steve Fleming

Mr. Provenzano 3rd Hour

Edgar Allan Poe has many exceptional pieces of writing. Many of which are short stories. Most will notice a common theme in most of these stories. This theme he uses is death. Poe had a gift of writing stories that are creepy, out of the ordinary, and just plain weird. Edgar Allan Poe had an obvious obsession with death in his stories. A majority of all his writings are centered around death or the concept of death. 

One of the best examples of Poe’s obsession of death is the story “The Fall of the House of Usher”. In this story an unnamed narrator is brought upon the house of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher. Poe almost immediately starts off the story talking about death when he describes the house when the narrator says, “the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees.” (Poe,”The Fall of the House of Usher”,3).  In the story Usher sends the narrator a letter describing “his earnest desire to him”(Poe,”The fall of the House of Usher”,5). The narrator meets Usher for the first time in a while. While the narrator and Usher are talking the narrator describes how Usher suffers in a way of his acute senses. He says, “He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sound, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror”(Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”,6). This description of Usher’s pain is an example of Poe’s liking for death. This is because it describes Usher’s slow torture in his life that he is bringing upon himself. Usher even says himself, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, I shall be lost.” (Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”,6). Later in the story when Usher and the narrator find Madeline still alive, Poe gives another example of death when he writes, “-then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death- agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.”(Poe,”The Fall of the House of Usher”,18). And with the death of Usher and his sister, Poe adds even more to his theme around death when the narrator flees from the house and looks back as it falls along with it’s owner. “While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind - the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight - my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder - there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the ‘House of Usher’.” (Poe,”The Fall of the House of Usher”,19). In this last scene when the house crumbles, it is symbolizing the death of the house, for it died with it’s owner, Usher.

Another one of Poe’s stories is “The Pit and the Pendulum”. This entire story is completely centered around death. This story is about a man who knows he is about to be tortured and sentenced to death. Right off the bat the man in the story fear of the dread sentence of death. Yet, he also says, “And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.”(Poe,”The Pit and the Pendulum”,1). What the man is saying is that he has already gone through so much pain, that the thought of death seems like the best thing for him. The story is told day by day what this man is going through. When the man describes the dark chamber he is trapped in when he first opens his eyes he says, “The blackness of eternal night encompassed me.”(Poe,”The Pit and the Pendulum”,2). Although the man had not died yet, this is still an example of death. In this part of the passage, Poe uses symbolism to describe death. The way he describes the setting of the narrator’s chamber, mimics the feeling of being dead. He does this by using the element of Gothic literature of being in an unknown environment. He expresses the feeling of being dead when the man in the story wakes up in complete darkness, and has no idea where he is. Later in the story the narrator can now see, but is tied to a table. He sees above him a pendulum. Over time he notices it slowly gaining in movement and is slowly moving downward toward him. The last third of the story is a detailed explanation of the mental and soon physical agony that upon the man in the story. Nearing the end of the story, Poe describes numerous forms of death that this man can encounter. The first is when he is waiting slowly for the pendulum to end him, but he escapes by having the rats chew apart his restraints, and bits of him. Once he escapes that, he is then presented with scalding hot walls closing in on him and is left with a choice. Either let himself burn to death, or jump into the deep mysterious pit that he discovered earlier in the story. What happens to the man is unclear and depicts two different ending, depending on the way that you look at it. Just before falling into the pit he says, “There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.”(Poe,”The Pit and the Pendulum”,8). One way to look at this ending is that what the narrator was describing was somewhat true and he was actually saved from what had seemed to be certain death. The second way to interpret this ending is that the man died, and what he was describing was his entering into the heavens. Considering that almost none of Poe’s other stories about death had any sliver of hope in them, the second interpretation of the ending seems more likely. This great detail and thought in the ending of this story shows how interested Poe was in death and how it came about people. 

Poe’s story titled, “Berenice”, is a good example of how death and madness, are strongly linked. This story is about a man by the name of Egaeus and his cousin Berenice. He and his Berenice were both very ill. At first, Egaeus describes himself as a man of his mind, but emotion from the heart. He does this when he says, “In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.”(Poe,”Berenice”,3).This all changes When in an instance he sees Berenice in a very different way. He basically falls in love with her and immediately talks to her about marriage. Later in the story he is in his chamber and he sees the shadowy outline of Berenice. He is brought back by her perfect teeth when she  smiles at him. He thinks about Berenice’s teeth for a long while, into the evening. The next day he was in deep meditation and thought when one of his servants told him that Berenice had died from an epileptic seizure. He then buries her. He then finds himself in his chamber alone when another one of his servant tells him that they heard noises outside. It ended up being Berenice. Poe then describes how the servant showed Egaeus a spade and bloody clothing. The detail that Poe puts in the story about the blood and gore of Berenice is one way he puts this story around death. Egaeus then knocks over a box that sat next to him and out came dental instruments and as he described, “...thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.”(Poe,”Berenice”,5). What actually happened was, Egaeus had pulled out every one of Berenice’s teeth, and buried her alive without even knowing that he had done so. Another way he shows his theme of death is by how he makes Egaeus go completely mad. Poe links this madness to death by the way he explains Egaeus burying his own wife alive, and pulling out all of her teeth.

Another one of Poe’s stories is “The Masque of Red Death”. This story is about the plague in a certain city. First off, the plague itself is an example of Poe’s obsession with death. In the story Prince Prospero is supposed to take care of the city because of the plague. He does this by locking people of his choosing, which were only his friends, and having parties. During one of the parties a strange man shows up. He is wearing a mask that looks like he has he plague. Aggravated, the prince goes to stab this man and just as he is about to do it, he dies. The someone from the crowd rips off the mask, but when they do, the man is gone. He had disappeared. The way Poe centers this story around death is with pure symbolism. The man with the mask symbolizes death itself. Poe creates a message in this story in two ways. When the man just disappeared when he was unmasked, Poe is saying that death cannot be seen, nor can it be captured. He also creates a message when he describes the man standing in the shadow of the clock. As explained before the masked man represents death. The clock represents time. The message here is that death is inevitable. When he says that he stands in the shadow of time, he is saying that time is the overseer of death. Poe’s great understanding of death greatly represents his obsession with death. 

Poe’s story, “The Black Cat”, is another good example of his liking of Death. In this story about a man who loved pets. He loved pets and their presence ever since he was a child. He described a certain liking to his cat named Pluto. The narrator describes the cat when he says, “This latter was remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.”(Poe,”The Black Death”,1). Near the start of the story, Poe uses some foreshadowing when the narrator talks about his wife’s reference to the bad luck of a black cat. He says, “...,my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.”(Poe,”The Black Cat”,1). Throughout the story the narrator starts to maltreat his pets and would get unusually angry at his pets. He eventually gets to the point where his once favorite cat, Pluto, annoys him to the point where he grabs the cat and cuts out one of it’s eyes. The man then has an urging for violence. He then takes the cat, wraps a noose around its neck, and hung it from the tree. Poe makes his liking for death even more clear here. The way he makes the narrator want and need to do wrong against his animals makes death seem right. In this story, Poe shows how death can be a manipulating force, as it was with the man in the story. This urge that has overtaken the narrator comes back at him when he wakes up to his house aflame. Later, after he had escaped, he noticed something on the only remaining wall from the house. On this wall was the figure of a gigantic cat, which also had a rope tied around its neck. This is a sign that the cat is going to be back, somehow. The cat comes back in the form of a similar cat. After keeping this cat for a while, the narrator starts to hate the cat. At the end of the story he tries to kill the cat with an axe while walking down into the cellar. His wife stops him and makes him very mad, to the point where he kills his wife with the axe. Poe’s simple yet gruesome details in this scene make the his theme of death clear. He writes, “...,I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.”(Poe,”The Black Cat”,4) The narrator then goes straight to hiding the body. At the very end of the story, the narrator is bragging to himself that he hid the body so well when he hears something coming from the wall. The cat had been sealed in the wall and now, as he watched, the wall was brought down, revealing the body. Poe writes, “It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman.”(Poe,”The Black Cat”,6). In this part it expresses his love of the love, and feeling of death. This is a great example of how he puts images into a person’s head.

Edgar Allan Poe was clearly obsessed with death. There are numerous examples in many of his stories. Although his obsession of death is somewhat odd, it is also a gift. Poe has the impressive skill of writing in such a way that you can picture the scene in your mind. Overall, Edgar Allan Poe is obviously obsessed with death, but uses it in a most impressive way.

Faust Legend

The Big Oak Tree

Omar Creed was a lonely man at the age of 43. He had short brown hair with a long coarse beard that hung halfway down to his round protruding stomach.  He had dark blue eyes and thick eyebrows.  He stood at about about 5’7” and carried himself slightly stooped over. He lived in an isolated cabin in the woods on the outskirts of a small town in northern Michigan. Omar had been alone almost all of his life, since he was 14.  Both of his parents disappeared out of nowhere on a cold winter day.  Omar learned to live on his own at a young age and has been alone ever since, with no contact of the outside world. The towns people would most likely not recognize Omar because he only goes into town for supplies every month or so.  He has not said a single word to anyone in over twenty years.  

One day Omar started to ponder about his lonely life. This is not the first time he has considered changing his lifestyle, but has never done anything about it before.  Omar finally decides that he needs company.  He goes into town and sets out to meet someone.  Just like every trip to town, people look at Omar as if he were and outsider and didn’t belong.  He didn’t.  Omar goes to the local pub and starts talking to a woman.  She expresses her obvious disinterest but Omar is impatient and makes an evil plan.  Omar knows that this woman will not come with him, so he is going to make her.

Omar waits until the woman walks down the back hallway to go to the bathroom.  As she walks out Omar suddenly grabs her and covers her mouth. Her silent screams are heard by no one. Once she is unconscious Omar drags her out the back door and puts her in his truck.  He drives down the single dirt road to his cabin.  Omar arrives at his home and ties the the woman to a support beam in the basement.  Omar sits and waits for her to regain consciousness.  She finally wakes up and screams for her life.  Omar looks at her and says, “Shhh, no one can hear you out here anyway”. With a grin he says, “I won’t hurt you, I just want some company”. Two days pass and Omar would just talk to this woman for hours, then he would stare.  The woman had been tied up her entire stay at Mr. Creed’s abode.  The woman finally decides she cannot take this any longer and waits for Omar to go to sleep. She starts grinding the rope against the cement beam for hours through the night.  Finally, she breaks loose and heads upstairs. Right as the woman gets to the top of the stairs Omar is standing there, furious. Omar grabs her by her arms and drags her back down the stairs. He throws her in his cold, damp cellar and slams the door shut. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling and cob webs overtake the the corners of the room.  Omar has a wooden club in his hand and looks down at it.  He stares at the woman for a moment and whispers, “Bad girl”.   Omar swings the club and hits the woman in the head.  She gets back up and pleads for mercy, but she never gets it.  He proceeded to beat her until her body was mangled and her head was bloody and dented.  Omar set the bat down, turned the light off, and went upstairs, leaving her destroyed body locked in the cellar.

Months go by and more than 15 other woman have gone through the same horrible experience of Omar’s first victim.  Omar is getting tired of every one of his “friends” trying to leave he starts walking to town through the woods to try his luck with one last person.  Omar is walking through the woods and feels something odd. He feels a sharp burst of bitter cold slice down his spine. He turned around and only saw a dark shadow move behind a tree.  When the shadow came from the other side of the large oak tree, he saw a man.  He was thin and had an eerie black glow surrounding his body.  His eyes looked empty and grey, as if he had no soul. His black hair was slicked back and his face had no expression other that his sinful grin. Omar doesn’t feel threatened or scared, but more intrigued and curious. The man says that he knows what Omar has been up to, but not in a disapproving way. The man says in a confident tone, “I can help you”. Omar notices that the man is shuffling some old, dirty coins between his fingers. The man starts pacing and tells Omar that he has a deal for him. “I can give you what you want, a life partner to stay with you forever,” the man says with his deep, raspy voice. Omar looks at him with a confused look on his face. The man asks, “That’s what you desire isn’t it?” Omar nods his head and asks what the man wants in return.  He says, “I simply want your soul”. Omar denies his offer without hesitation and goes back to his home. He then goes downstairs and stares at the large metal door that contains the decaying bodies that remain behind.  Omar thinks about what the man said, knowing now that he was the Devil himself. He reviews his dark and evil life and the offer the Devil gave him and decides, what do I have to lose”. Omar walks back into the woods and finds the Devil waiting for him by the big oak tree, as if he knew he was going to come back. Omar tells the Devil, “I accept”. The Devil then takes Omar’s hand and pricks it with his grotesque and yellow nail.  Omar’s blood drips onto one of the Devil’s coins and puts it in his pocket. 

The next day Omar goes into town and sits down at the local bar. Moments later, a tall beautiful woman with curly brown hair sits next to him.  “My name is Samantha”, she says to Omar with a sweet voice.  Omar introduces himself knowing this is what he has asked for. 

Omar and Samantha date for several months and Omar starts to become a real person.  They live together in his house and decide that they are ready to get married. They have a small wedding in town and officially start their life together. Years pass and Omar and Samantha are living a perfect life in happiness. One day Omar is in the kitchen and looks outside to see a crow perched on a branch staring down at Samantha in the garden. He knows something isn’t right but he ignores it. As the weeks pass Omar starts getting paranoid when Samantha goes out into town by herself. He starts to think that she is cheating on him.  One of these days he couldn’t take it anymore and starts furiously yelling at Samantha accusing her of having an affair.  She keeps denying Omar’s accusation begging for him to believe her. This just makes him more angry. He yells and yells until, “FWAP”, he hits Samantha right across her face.  She instantly starts fighting back, flailing her fists at him. He is getting more and more furious at her and grabs a knife off the counter and shoves it into Samantha’s chest. He stabs her over and over again until she is lying in a pool of her own blood.  Omar stand up, looks at Samantha and is filled with disbelieve.  He drops the knife and starts waking into the woods.  

It comes to his attention that the Devil has not met to his end of the deal. Omar goes to the same oak tree and calls out his name. Sure enough, out comes the Devil from his dark shadows. Omar yells at him saying, “You said we would live a long and happy life! Look what you have done, what happened to our deal?” The Devil looks at him, chuckles and says, “I lied”. The Devil proceeds toward Omar and says, “It’s time for  me to get what I have been longing for”. The Devil grabs him by his neck and pulled his soul from his very body. Omar was never seen again, all that remains of him is a few of his bones, lying next to the big oak tree.

Verict

Mark Twain is not guilty of being a racist because of how he makes racists look in the book, his accurate writing, and his role in the Confederate army and with his family. 

Mark Twain is clearly not racist for many reasons.  He makes this very obvious with how he depicted all the white racist characters in the book.  All the characters who are made to be racists are written as very bad people. For example, Pap is one of the most racist characters in the book, and he is also one of the most hated.  Pap is seen as a mean, horrible man and Twain wrote him in this way on purpose, just like every other racist character in the book.  Another example of this is the king.  The king openly admitted that he was a racist and thought he was superior to blacks.  He was also a con-man who tricked people out of their money.  He too is a bad person in the story.  Every character Twain wrote as a racist, was also written as a bad person.  With that, Twain made it very clear that he is not a racist, and does not like the idea of racism. 

Many people argue that Twain is a racist because of the dialogue he uses in Huckleberry Finn.  The main problem people have with his dialogue is his use of the word “nigger”.  Today this word is very offensive and disrespectful.  Back in the setting of Huckleberry Finn, the word “nigger” is just what they called every black man.  It wasn’t a derogatory word back in the 1800’s in the state of Mississippi.  In the 1800’s Mississippi was a slave state.  It was a common occurrence for most people to own their own slaves.   The way Twain had people talk down to blacks was not through personal feeling at all.  The only reason why Twain wrote this way was to be accurate when he wrote his book.  The dialogue in Huckleberry Finn is accurate for the time period and does not make him racist.

When Mark Twain was a boy his parents owned slaves.  This wasn’t a big deal at the time, but would be later in his life.  Once he got old enough he would have to make a decision about owning slaves.  Either buy a slave like his parents, which would be what most do, or decide not to own a slave.  Twain chose what he felt was most right, his choice was to not own a slave.  If he hadn’t truly believed in slavery he would have bought a slave without a question.  He obviously cared about other people and was against slavery.  At another point in his life Twain was in a rut.  He was poor and needed to make money.  His only choice to make money was to join the Confederacy and fight in the war.  After two weeks Twain couldn’t take it, he could not be on the side that was for slavery.  So he left the Confederacy even if it was his only form of money he could make.  This is a strong example of how much he was against slavery and how he looked at blacks equally.  Therefore, Mark Twain is not a racist.

Huck Post 5

In the book Huck and Jim are best buds.  You wouldn't think to ponder the idea of Huck being a racist.  Throughout the book Huck doesn't make obvious notions about if he a racist or not.  Either way you look at it, it takes some deciphering to come up with a verdict.  Is Huck a racist?  His friendship toward Jim makes it seem that he isn't.  Overall, racism is about what you are truly thinking and not what you say.  Huck may be friends with Jim, but Huck is still a racist.

Jim is that one exception.  The only reason why Hucks doesn't act superior to Jim is because Jim is a huge part of Huck's life.  Jim is Huck's main father figure.  Other than Jim, Huck has nothing against slavery and doesn't think it is wrong.  To any other black man Huck feels he is seen as a "higher rank".   Huck is also only starting to mature.  Since he is young, and given that in that time period blacks were lower class, it was probably implanted into Huck's head.  Once he matures and developes his mind he may change his ideas and beliefs on slavery and the black race in general.

huck post 4

Huck and Tom are together and are presented with the challenge to free Jim.  Jim is supposedly locked in a shed by a master that captured him as a runaway.  Huck and Tom then devise a plan to rescue Jim. Huck comes up with a simple and effective plan, but Tom doesn't agree with it.  Of coarse Tom wants to make the mission unnecessarily risky.  Tom comes up with plans that are just plain stupid.  For example, digging for Jim with knives, baking a 'rope' pie, and so on.  

At this point Huck has realized that this is wrong.  However, he feels it is the right thing to do if it means freeing Jim, his best friend.  Huck earlier that if Tom does something than Huck wants to do the same, regardless if it means "going to hell".  This becomes ironic because at the point in the story when Huck and Tom are going to rescue Jim Huck knows he is doing something wrong.  Still he is shocked that Tom is helping him doing something bad.  Although Huck knows that he is doing something bad he still sees Tom as kind of a bad person for doing something bad.  

huck post

Huck was invited to live with Grangerfords for as long as he likes.  Huck starts to see their beautiful house as a home. The Grangerfords (a very wealthy family) have a very recognizable relationship with the Sheperdsons.  Their relationship is similar to the famous British play that we read Romeo and Juliet.  The Grangerfords, like the Capulets, and the Sheperdsons, like the Montegue, share similar problems with eachother just like in Romeo and Juliet.  Buck is a young boy at Huck's age that hates the Sheperdsons.  Buck's hate toward them is so great that he says that he would kill a Sheperdson if one were present. Buck says he doesn't even know when or why the fighting started.

For some reason the Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons have this unexplainable feud. It has gotten so bad that there have been multiple killing in just the past year between these two families.  One of these killing included the death of a 14 year-old Grangerford girl.  The fighting just keeps fueling itself more and more to keep it continuing.  At one point buck is hiding behind a bush with Huck and is trying to take a shot at one of the Sheperdsons.  He takes a shot straight at his head, but misses.  This does not go well with the Sheperdsons.  It all ends up with Buck being chased down and shot, all while Huck, his best bud, watches. What makes all of these really funny is that while the two families are at church listening to the sermon about brotherly love, they have their rifles in between their knees...ready.