Huckleberry Finn: The Vicarious Experience Of Realism
December 11, 2012 The Vicarious Experience of Realism and Romanticism The two concepts of realism and romanticism are essentially complete opposites. Realism looks at the facts and gives the reader a vicarious experience through its story, making them feel the pain, sorrow, or happiness. Romanticism sugar coats everything and makes something that in real life is tragic and painful into something beautiful. Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gives the reader the experience of death in its true tragic form through realism making the reader feel the pain of life in its first person narration, while Edgar Allen Poe’s poem Annabel Lee gives the reader an experience of romanticizing
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Poe’s romanticism finds the beauty in anything, including death. In Annabel Lee the death of Annabel is not openly admitted but hidden behind Poe’s usage of words when he says “A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea” (Poe 13-20). By the words that he uses, he expresses the beauty that he saw in her death and the love that he had for her even after death. Twain on the other hand did not hide the ugliness of anything in the world and rather showed it blatantly, although sometimes using humor to do so. Twain uses the characters of his book to do this for him. The Duke and the King are characters that show the ugliness of all men. Twain shows their true greediness and stupidity when they pretend to be Peter Wilks’ Brothers just to get the money in his will. Huck’s realization of this is shown when he says “Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn’t drop a carpet-bag and bust out a-cryinging. If they warn’t the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever I struck” (Twain 159). Through them he shows the fakeness of mankind and how greedy they truly are. Unlike Poe sugar coating everything and making something extremely horrible into a beautiful thing, Twain exposed it for what it is attacking what he believes needs to be attacked without sugar coating
Poe’s romanticism finds the beauty in anything, including death. In Annabel Lee the death of Annabel is not openly admitted but hidden behind Poe’s usage of words when he says “A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea” (Poe 13-20). By the words that he uses, he expresses the beauty that he saw in her death and the love that he had for her even after death. Twain on the other hand did not hide the ugliness of anything in the world and rather showed it blatantly, although sometimes using humor to do so. Twain uses the characters of his book to do this for him. The Duke and the King are characters that show the ugliness of all men. Twain shows their true greediness and stupidity when they pretend to be Peter Wilks’ Brothers just to get the money in his will. Huck’s realization of this is shown when he says “Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn’t drop a carpet-bag and bust out a-cryinging. If they warn’t the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever I struck” (Twain 159). Through them he shows the fakeness of mankind and how greedy they truly are. Unlike Poe sugar coating everything and making something extremely horrible into a beautiful thing, Twain exposed it for what it is attacking what he believes needs to be attacked without sugar coating