Most of the time, life feels like a series of decisions such as what to wear or what to eat. Usually, a person makes the easiest choice and may be swayed by what others think of him. Yet, there comes a time when, instead of following the crowd, he has the opportunity and responsibility to trust his own sense of truth and choose accordingly. This paper will demonstrate how the character of Huck Finn is an example of that as discussed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay, "Self-Reliance."
Emerson asserts that everyone has a responsibility to trust themselves. They must be willing to go against the accepted customs. His code for life is summed up when he states: "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist" (Emerson, 1841, www.emersoncentral.com). He goes on to say, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself" (www.emersoncentral.com). He is saying that each person must ultimately be responsible for their own decisions and trust what they know to be true, instead of what others say.
In Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884/1948), Huck Finn has grown up surviving by instinct. Each decision is one that will help keep him going one more day. This does not make him a nonconformist, because going along with what others say is how he survives most of the time as can be seen in his relationships with most of the other characters in the novel. With Jim, however, he has learned the meaning of a real friendship. When Huck tears up the letter he's written and says, "I'll go to hell!" (Twain, p. 272), he is obeying his own conscience, what he knows to be true.
In this instance, Huck is standing up for a friend when the rest of society would not, just as Jim has taken care of Huck, when the rest of society preferred to ignore Huck. Huck knows, instinctively, that this is the right thing to do, despite what society has taught him. As Emerson says, "To believe your own...