What Does Huck Learn In Episode One From Watson And The Widow

Widow Douglas

Widow Douglas, the prime mother figure in Adventures in Blueberry Finn , is the strict, onetime, pious guardian of Huck Finn. Huck describes the bones nature of their relationship -"The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, because how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand up information technology no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my saccharide-hogshead again, and was costless and satisfied"(ane). In an attempt to further "sivilize" Huck, she besides tries to go Huck to quit his other bad habits - "Pretty soon I wanted to fume, and asked the widow to let me. Merely she wouldn't. She said it was a hateful practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not exercise it anymore"(3). The widow embodies culture and everything respectable but Huck's platonic is to escape the traps of culture. This ideal proves to be a difficult one to live upwardly to for even his best friend Tom applies pressure level on him to change - only allowing Huck to join his band of pirates if he "would go back to the widow and be respectable"(2).

Part of the widow's overall blueprint is to instill Huck with religion. Huck recognizes the good intentions on her behalf -"The widow, she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me lots of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it"(2) but he cannot bring himself to accept them. She tries using the scripture to teach Huck almost religion but to no productive end -"Subsequently supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers; and I was in a sweat to learn about him; just by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care about him, because I don't take no stock in expressionless people"(two). When she tries to instill adept religious values - "I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the fourth dimension, and never call back about myself"(13), Huck is unable to understand the logic behind them. To Huck, everything about religion is illogical or contradictory. He yearns to accept organized religion but somehow gets denied every time -"Sometimes the widow would take me to i side and talk about Providence in a way that would make my mouth h2o; but perhaps the adjacent day Miss Watson would take concord and knock it all down again"(14). Despite all of the widow'southward attempts, Huck never fully accepts organized religion.

Since the Widow functions every bit a reformer and mother figure, she can exist associated with the following characters: