The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn Essay, Research Paper

St. Gregory of Nyassa stated, ?It is absolutely necessary that the soul should be healed and purified, and if this does not take place during its life on earth, it must be accomplished in future lives.? St. Gregory is saying that during a person?s life, he must find a way to restore and clean his soul, if not in his first lifetime then in his next. In order for a person to purify and heal his soul, he must like himself for who he really is and not someone he pretends to be. During some people?s lives they find a way to like themselves. Other people have to be reborn several times before they learn to like themselves for who they really are. There are many examples of this in Mark Twains? novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and also in real life. An example in the novel is when Huck travels down the Mississippi River pretending to be some imaginative characters he made up. An example of a real life situation is when a person pretends to be another person so he can be in popular.

At the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the reader finds Huck comparing himself to Tom Sawyer. ??I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn?t back out now??(Twain 73) According to Huck he would never be as sneaky and as clever as Tom. While Huck travels down the Mississippi River he is reborn into many different characters. Huck gets himself into trouble when he forgets who he is, which he needs to get out of. This shows that he is more clever and sneakier than Tom. With every rebirth, Huck?s soul comes one step closer to being healed and purified. Towards the end of the book, Huck is reborn as the king and the duke?s servant. In this life he finds out that the king and duke are stealing money from the Wilks girls. He realizes that what they are doing is terrible. When Huck tells Mary Jane to leave, because the king and the duke where going to give the girls away, his soul is almost purified. At this point of the book he is almost at this point, his soul is almost restored. Huck?s soul is finally purified when he feels the satisfaction of helping Jim escape from Aunt Sally. Huck finds that he likes himself the way he is.

An example of the soul being healed and purified in reality is when a student thinks that she isn?t cool enough. Then she becomes someone she isn?t, just to hang out with the ?in crowd?. By pretending to be someone she isn?t, she might get invited to ?cool? parties. These ?cool? parties might have drugs and alcohol, something that she knows she doesn?t like. By being pressured to drink or to take the drugs by her so-called cool friends; she realizes that she wants real friends that will not force her to do anything she doesn?t want to do. She then finds out that her life, before she was cool, was better. After this realization, her soul is healed and purified. Another example of a real life situation is when a person has a different perspective of himself from other people. He thinks that he is cool, while others think that he is not cool. His soul is purified when he learns to not care about what others think of him. Both people?s souls are restored when they learn to like themselves and to not care about how others think of them.

A person will go through many rebirths before he finds out that he likes himself for who he is and not as what other people sees him. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses an example of soul purification by having Huck accepting himself at the end of the novel. Huck goes through many rebirths before he finally cleans his soul. There are many real life examples of restoring one?s soul. People clean their souls when they learn to like themselves for who they are, and not care for what other people think of them. All in all for one to restore and purify his soul, one must learn to accept himself for who he is.

Bibliography

Understanding Reincarnation. Online. Internet. Available: http://pages.ivillage.com/wh/dreamcoah/reincarnation.html.

Cayce, Edgar. ?A.R.E. ? Reincarnation: Have We Lived Before.? A.R.E. Inc., 1998. On-line. Internet. 30 October 99. Available: http://www.are-cayce.com/reincar.htm.

Cr?me, Benjamin. ?Renunciation Leads to Self-Mastery.? Benjamin Cr?me: Reincarnation

Karma, and past Lives. On-line. Internet. Available: http://www.inetprot.com/~one/bcrkpl.html

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Signet Classic, 1959.