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He does not quite understand the idea of slavery because he is young and he can still see the cruelty behind it. He does not see class as the adults around him do. When he struggles with turning in Jim, he finally decides he cannot do it. He states, "People would call me a low down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum -- but that don't make no difference. I ain't agoing to tell" (Twain 269). Here we see that he knows the language and knows what others have told him to do based on Jim's class but he decides that he knows better than the grown-ups around him. In Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, class becomes an important issue for Crane in that it becomes what separates Maggie from the rest of the world. She is never able to escape her lower-class status and when she loses the love of her life, she sees no further hope for her life. These stories illustrate how class often divides people.
Racism is also evident in these stories. In "Sonny's Blues," one of the most racist acts is the killing of Sonny's uncle by a group of drunken white men. Sonny's mother's describes the incident in such a way that we can see the awful behavior that racism incurs. While the white men driving the car were drunk, it is by no means an excuse...
They did not slow down but instead "let out a great whoop and holler and they aimed the car straight at him' (Baldwin 32). Here we see that a life is treated as something practically worthless. In "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," racism emerges with the treatment of African-Americans. Twain emphasizes racism through the character of Jim, who desperately wants to be free. In Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, racism can be seen in Pete and Maggie's relationship. Pete eventually breaks things off with Maggie, leaving her feeling more alone and desperate than ever. Racism is a topic that lurks in the background of each of these stories, illuminating the notion that even when race should not matter, it does and if others allow a person's race define who they are in our eyes, we risk much.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction R.V. Cassill, ed. W.
W. Norton and Company. New York: 1981.
Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. New York: Random House. 2001.
Twain, Mark. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The Heath Anthology of American
Literature. Lauter, Paul, ed.…
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction R.V. Cassill, ed. W.
W. Norton and Company. New York: 1981.
Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. New York: Random House. 2001.
Twain, Mark. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The Heath Anthology of American
With the link to the Bible, the story "…resonates with the richness of distant antecedents" and it no longer is "locked in the middle of the twentieth century"; hence, it never grows old, Foster concludes (56). C.S. Lewis on the Importance of Reading Good Literature C.S. Lewis, noted novelist, literary critic, lay theologian and essayist, advocates reading literature in his book an Experiment in Criticism. He is disappointed in fact when
Sexual freedom and adolescent rebellion in John Updike's "A&P" The story of John Updike's "A&P" is a simple one: three girls in bathing suits walk into a supermarket in a 'shore town' that is largely populated by tourists in the summer. The girls cause a stir as they wander through the aisles. In general, the female customers are shocked while the males are rendered speechless with sexual desire. The A&P store