Twain and Douglass essay

Chris Sandberg

per 9

Twain and Douglass essay

Marc Twain and Fredrick Douglass are both arguably two of the greatest authors of all time.They both have written story's based on slavery. When we read a story form both authors they both had similar characteristics in their story. Both Fredrick and Huck fin are both take pace in America when slavery was legal, and in these story's both characters break away from the expectations of their setting. They both take place in the south and they give people a look on what they think of slavery in America.
The first book I'm going to talk about is Fredrick Douglass . This book is about his life as a slave. In this book we see him break away from his setting’s rules when he goes to covys farm. Covy is a white slave owner who's known to be a slave breaker. we see Douglass break from his setting when he stands up to the slave owner in the barn. this is breaking the settings rules because this is a place where slaves are not suppose to fight back and just do ass their told. But when he stand up to him it goes against every thing in the setting due to the fact that covys suppose to beating him, so when he stands up to him it is a shock because its unexpected. Then we also see it when he runs away from the farm to go and find his owner. This is something else that breaks setting because covy is suppose to stop him from doing things like that.
Next when we look at mark Twain's Huck fin we see Huck break away from the setting. This book is about a southern white boy who runs away from home and meets up with a run away slave named Jim. During the story Huck plays a mean joke on Jim and then goes an apologises for it, and then goes and says that he wasn't sorry for saying sorry. Since Huck lived in the south and the way he was raised this is breaking away from the setting. Then we also see him lie to a bunch of white Southerners to protect Jim. This also shows a break because if it was any other Southerner they would have turned Jim in but instead Huck protects him.
Also both authors tell about what they think of slavery. They with Douglass based on the story we can tell that he thinks slavery is terrible ant that it needs to be abolished. But with Twain he doesn't say any thing about it even when we look at Huck he doesn't think all slavery is bad he just wants to help his friend Jim. So it is hard to tell based on the book what Twain thinks about slavery in the south.
So Both Twain and Douglass both have characters that break away from their settings. Then Douglass has a view on slavery being abolished in the south while Twain's character Huck just wants to be with his friend Jim.