Huckleberry Finn

The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn

In this excerpt, Bennet puts one’s conscience into perspective. Taking the stories of Huckleberry Finn, Heinrich Himmler, and Jonathan Edwards, he paints a picture of the difficulties man faces with morality and sympathy. While everyone may have a different opinion of what a good or bad morality is, he said it the best I’ve ever heard,” All that I can mean by a ‘bad morality’ is a morality whose principles I deeply disapprove of. When I call a morality bad, I cannot prove that mine is better.” He indicates through the examples of the three subjects lives that sympathy and morality ought to go hand in hand when one is determining how to act in good morals; I without hesitation, agree.

Before delving into Huckleberry Finn, he gives an example of when sympathy can be detrimental in the moral thought process of a person. “...a small child, sick and miserable, clings tightly to his mother and screams in terror when she tries to pass him over to the doctor to be examined. If the mother gave way to her sympathy, that is to her feeling for the child’s misery and fright, she would hold it close and not let the doctor come near; but don’t we agree that it might be wrong for her to act on such a feeling?” He points out that the right moral course of action is ever changing depending on the situation. It is not always right to just act morally as it is not always right to just act sympathetically.

Huck Finn had a very odd set up for this particular excerpt. His moral upbringing would have him turn his friend Jim in. He is a slave and where Huck is from, slaves are property. They have no rights or freedom. The battle he is fighting is a “moral” one. To myself, it would obviously be immoral to rat this human being out and deny him of his freedom or ever seeing his family again; to Huck, it is a real mind bender. He’s seen going back and forth with himself on why he should do the right thing and turn Jim in. How terrible it is for him...