tand a chance against the endless temptations of the devil. This is exactly the notion against which Hawthorne revolts. Had Goodman Brown had the willpower and the self-esteem necessary, he would have prevailed. With the ability to trust in one-self comes the ability to deal with any problem that life might throw in ones way, even the temptations of the soul. Thus we see the idea of self-reliance creeping into view. Samuel L. Clemens first published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884, a time where the idea of self-reliance was firmly established in the minds of the American people. The narrator and main protagonist Huck Finn is a young boy already introduced to the public in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) in which Huck is a runaway. He lives in an old barrel free of all obligations and is generally a happy boy. As Tom Sawyer progresses the boys help find a band of highwaymen, get them arrested and punished, and become rich in the process. Huck gets himself adopted by the Widow Douglas and this is where we encounter him in the beginning of Huckleberry Finn. Although he has been given everything the society deemed appropriate at the time (i.e. a family, a home etc.) Huck finds himself uncomfortable in his new clothing, unable to conform to strict house rules enforced upon him by the widow (“…The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time…” ). He generally misses the old days when he and Tom would wander about doing what they pleased. It is obvious that Clemens infuses Huck with his own ideas of freedom and wanderlust as something very positive. In fact it is almost certain that without these qualities Huck would never have survived to this point. As the story advances we encounter Huck’s father: A violent drunk with a massive inferiority complex towards everybody. He was the reason that Huck ran off and found his barrel in the first place and he is the only person that Huck truly f...
