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Ralph Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, concludes that “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself”. It can be understood as each of us is embarked to the journey or quest of self-discovery, knowingly or not. All acts of our lives, which seem to be disconnected and random, can be connected. To do this we need to find who are we and realize ourselves at maximum. Two famous authors, Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in their great novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter, tell us about three individuals, which are on the road to self discovery. Hester, Arthur and Huckleberry have to do choices that affect their lives and lives of other people. Each above listed character has to decide what is better: to listen to the voice of society or the voice of their heart and soul, inner guidance. We will analyze the steps they take along their ways toward self realization.

In The Scarlet Letter we will think about Hester’s realization about her adulterous affair with Dimmesdale and the difference between Hester’s understanding of this affair from society’s one. We will think about Arthur’s journey of self-realization and his way to emotional freedom, discuss the role of forgiveness in this process.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn we will analyze the relationship between Huck and Tom in terms of Huck’s self-reliance throughout the novel and in terms of social norms and natural morality. We will reflect on how Mark Twain defines freedom.

Finally, all the conclusions will be analyzed in terms of Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance. Particular attention will be paid to the common ideas and concepts that authors share.

Freedom and Forgiveness.  

I completely agree with Ralph Emerson in his statement “nothing can bring you peace but yourself”. I agree we should search for the roots of all our problems, failures, diseases both physical and mental, and all the negative things right inside ourselves. Most of our negative emotions come from our diffidence. It is our choice who we are. That is not society around us who determines our personality. It is our choice to forgive or not, to hate or not, to love or not. This choice affects our internal state and our self-reliance.
 

The Scarlet Letter.

After long time of being an outcast for all the people around and thinking over her sin everyday Hester eventually realizes growth of her personality. She becomes better than before just because of permanent thinking over her past background and its symbol – scarlet letter. She began better understand other people, their souls. Hester at least realized who she is. She realizes that her adultery is not a sin for her because she had sex with the man she loves. Her sin was not in adultery with Arthur, it was in her marriage without love. Hester leaves behind her sin with permanent feeling of guilt. But society has quite the opposite opinion on this matter. According to Puritan norms and moral Hester’s adultery with Black Man is a sin. Her daughter, Pearl, is a daughter of Devil and Hester conceals the name of the Devil in the flesh. Hester knows all this not by hearsay. But she already learned to rather listen to her heart than social norms and morality which often confront with her heart’s guidelines. Hester realized that she has a choice: to suffer everyday from the feeling of guiltiness between cruel society or feeling of joy and happiness. This choice depends only from herself. Not from society, not from God or Devil. If she focuses on joy pain would go away and leave her.

The major factor helped Hester to arrive to her new outlook was her understanding that it is only her choice between pain, guiltiness or joy and happiness. Society is not able to affect her decision. She realized her opinion may differ from the same of society and it brings her peace. If she would run away from this society to another where people do not know about her past then she would recognize that society was right and her role of outcast is just.  But she has proved the opposite by bearing her cross.

Arthur Dimmesdale had his own quest for freedom. He has a feeling of permanent guilt and always suffers from it. His cross is very heavy. He thinks over the fact he denies his family, his daughter everyday. He feels guiltiness for leaving Hester together with Pearl to bear society’s accusation alone and he is afraid of joining them. He could not even make old to publicly recognize he is the Black Man, Devil in the flesh and that Pearl is his own daughter. All these thoughts make Arthur weak and pitiable. Actually, Dimmesdale is not able to realize who he is. He has a crisis of conscience and only by the end of the novel he understands his refusal from his own personality could not give him peace. It is impossible for him to suffer this burden anymore. He finally realizes who he is and feels high. But his quest for freedom is finished with his death. Important factor that helped Arthur to realize all this is his meeting with Hester in the forest, zone where social norms of Puritans do not work – moral free zone, where they are who they are. Here they return to their past – adultery but they feel no shame for it.

Chillingworth is not free man also. He bears hatred inside of him and suffers from it everyday.  But this is his own choice, nobody forces him to do so. It would be better for him to forgive Hester and Arthur, to forgive himself for marrying Hester who is much younger than he is. Hating somebody is a burden, we should not do this because it makes our everyday life unbearable.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Despite Huckleberry Finn is a boy he has a strong self-reliance. Hard life, drunk-father and inquisitiveness make Huck quite adult. Actually, Huckleberry has no-one to rely on except for himself, Tom Sawyer and Jim. But his friends are unavailable sometimes.

Tom Sawyer is not as adult as Huck is. Despite this Huck is significantly influenced by Tom he is able to make decisions himself finally. Tom represents absolutely another part of society living on the opposite bank of Mississippi. This society has a firm logic of mentality, its representatives do want to see anything else except of their own interests. They do not recognize Negroes as people. Negroes are slaves and even their names do not worth of whites’ attention. Tom Sawyer was brought up in this society and he advocates the same logic. But sometimes Tom is able to reevaluate his beliefs towards the compromise and common sense. Sometimes Tom makes thoughtless actions. Comparing Huck and Tom it is obvious they are different and even highly opposite characters. Tom is much dependant on the novels, full of adventures and dangers, he has read. Namely, on some literature heroes what makes him quite naive boy with enormous imagination. In the opposite, Huckleberry tries to stay away from this society and its norms by neglecting lessons of Widow Douglas. Huck’s soul is predisposed to adventures but he is rather practical than Tom. Tom’s life is an adventure. He often does not care about the consequences of his another trick. Tom’s family is not an indigent why Huck represents beggary people from another bank of the river. These people advocate another logic. They consider that loving is a natural thing. Huckleberry is able to self-sacrifice. From one of the most noticeable and important differences among these boys I want to mention their attitude towards Jim. For Tom Sawyer Jim is just another slave and his rescue is another adventure. Tom does not care that Jim is free actually, after the death of his owner, and all rescue procedures are just a game for him. A very cruel game, because it plays with lives of people, their destinies. Tom’s game is a good demonstration of social cruelty. But Huck realizes all the consequences of rescuing Jim for him, Tom and Jim. From the point of morality Huck is to free Jim but logic of Tom’s society implies that freeing Jim is a sin and will cause God to become angry. Moreover, society of Tom Sawyer will be angry even more than God.

We see Huck as he is during his journey down the river. There he is conducted by his own logic and morality. There he throws down a challenge to social norms by befriending Jim the runaway. Huck does not regret about that, he realizes that society is wrong in many of its beliefs and norms, and even correct social norms must have exceptions. Besides, society is far away from him and is not able to force him doing anything.  He even realized that sometimes deception serves for good intention. On the land Huck is more likely to conduct like Tom. Here Huck is relies more upon Tom and his self-reliance.

Relationships between Huck and Jim are intolerable from the point of society. Black and white people could not be friends. Social norms define Jim as a slave, they do not imply he is a personality but a property. But Huckleberry realizes Jim is a personality. Moreover Jim is a good man. He is quite intelligent (sometimes even more than white people); he is natural and is not afraid of showing his love to Huck. He is not afraid of showing his emotional experience when he thought Huck is dead and later when he revived. For Jim this resurrection from dead makes Huck like a symbol of Jesus. From the point of natural morality relationships between Huck and Jim are absolutely right. My philosophy does tell me these relationships could not be other despite any social norms. Huck realized Jim is much better man than many others. Society has isolated Jim from his family and what could be worse than this? Joint adventures made these people like a father and a son. There is one common trait among them: both have nobody (except each other) to rely on during their journey. Jim is older than Huck and he is moral man.

So Huck is to make a serious decision between freeing and leaving Jim. It is a crisis of his conscience because this is a choice between mind’s directions and heart’s one. Which of them he should follow? I think he has made the right choice and grew even more despite becoming an outcast of society by neglecting all its principles at once.

In this novel Mark Twain defines freedom as Mississippi. Here Jim and Huck are really free but this freedom is dangerous. They learned and experienced many things including that freedom can turn into hell when they missed their ‘turn’ due to fog.

In the novels we read during the course authors are seriously concerned with freedom, moral norms, quest for freedom and its price, crisis of conscience and education. All these things are closely interconnected not only in the novels but in reality. Freedom is intangible and these are we who decide what freedom is and how to find it. Actually, freedom is around us and there is a single step towards it. But we have to make bold to become free. Being free is being yourself. It implies you are the only who determines your conduct and perception of the world. Society and its norms must not determine who we are but we should determine what is moral and which norms to follow.

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