Comparative analysis of three novels through thematic interpretation

¶ … Huckleberry Finn, Emma Woodhouse and Asher Lev are three characters that develop in three different parts of the world, in different times, and under different circumstances, but who all share the love for being truthful to an ideal. Intelligent and special individuals, ahead of their times and with a good heart, they are all on their way to discover themselves and the world around them.

Huckleberry Finn, the protagonist in mark Twain's novel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is an intelligent boy who is living in a small town named St. Petersburg, in the Mississippi valley, a few decades before the civil war. The setting and the time in history are very important to the development of the character, because the story is told through the boy's voice. The main character is a child who although unfortunate to live with his drunken and scruples father during his first years of life, learns to appreciate freedom and will soon find the institution of slavery repugnant and against common sense. The novel unravels Huckleberry Finn's journey from a careless child to a person who learns to appreciate common sense, justice, intelligence and the beauty in human nature regardless of the color of the skin or the social class.

Emma, the main character in the homonym novel by Jane Austen, is a young woman in her early twenties who is living with her father in the countryside in the eighteenth century England, described by Jane Austen as: "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition" (Austen). She is very different from Huckleberry Finn, but she is also a character that is on the way to discover herself and her identity in the context of her time and place in society.

The protagonist of the novel My Name is Asher Lev is living with his family, as a member of the Ladover Hassidic Community, in Brooklyn, in the early 1900s. Like the two protagonists presented above, Asher is a child about to discover the marvels of art and the troubles brought by the conflicts between his artistic passion, his family, his community, and ultimately, his religion.

The character Huckleberry Finn in the novel the Adventures of Tom Sawyer will be adopted by a respectable widow, Mrs. Douglas who was living with her sister, Miss Watson. The end of this first novel should have created the premises for a happy life, in a civilized house for the boy who until then used to live in a barrack with a drunken father. The second novel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows a different story. The narrator's voice is that of the boy. The language used by the author is exactly the dialect of a boy who does not master English very well. His worries, questions and judgments made in his inner thoughts are expressed through his voice and the hilarious effect of the irony in many circumstances is very effective throughout the novel.

After an unfortunate series of events that will make him return to his father's beatings, Huckleberry Finn will finally get the chance to run away. He meets Jim, a runaway slave, owned by Miss Watson. They will develop a special relationship and a firndship. Through Jim, Huck Finn will better understand the irony of people around him who read about Moses in the Bible and yet own slaves they put in chains or sell just they would do with an animal. The two go through a series of adventures and the characters they encounter will act as props for the main idea of a highly hypocritical and narrow minded society who thinks about itself that it is a civilized and well advanced one, but is in fact very limited and blinded by its own faults. Huck is torn everything civilized people like the widow or later, Tom Sawyer's uncle and aunt ever tried to teach him and his love for justice and his common sense.

Emma, on the other hand, is a young woman, who although in a very privileged position in the society of the eighteenth century in England, is also caught between the prejudices and the very limited views society had on women's roles in those times. Jane Austen is also using the irony as a tool to make her humor effective. Emma is a strong willed person, very confident in her abilities of a matchmaker for those around her. Emma's witnessing of the married life with a child her sister is living and every other marriage account she hears make her decide to never get married and thus never seek love. Marriage was not a very attractive perspective of a young intelligent woman who did not had the need to improve her social status or to find a husband who provided for her.

Emma is also in a place and a time where she cannot put to use her abilities and intelligence since the eighteenth century was not very generous with young ladies living on the country side in terms of activities. Emma will concentrate her attention on the people around her she is trying to mach, in an attempt to ignore her own feelings and desires. She is being used to have everything her way and that is way she will make a lot of errors, but her intelligence, good heart and guardian angel under the name of Mr. George Knightley will keep her away from any major or irreparable mistakes. Emma's troubles on her way of becoming a young adult seem much more frivolous compared to those Huckleberry Finn is going through. Yet, they have in common their will to fight prejudice and not to take biases and general beliefs as being worthy of guiding their own lives without ever questioning them.

Asher Lev is a character that besides growing up is also developing as an artist. Like, Emma and Huck Finn, he has to fight with a prejudices of a conservative society that, although well meant, is sometimes acting against his artistic credo. Asher is not only fighting to find his freedom as an adult who is living away from his parents, but he is also fighting to find his identity as an artist. Being a genuine artist means being free of prejudice, first of all. The creative power does not produce artistic values until the mind is liberated from any limits set by society or even by the artist's own convictions. True art does not care of religion. A Jew can appreciate Michelangelo's works even if these are mainly biblical subjects.

Huckleberry Finn is taking lessons not only from the human beings around him, but also from the nature he learns to respect. The Mississippi river is teaching him to be humble in front of such a nature's force: "It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed -- only a little kind of a low chuckle" (Twain, 1994). Along their journey as runaways, they debate over ethics and morality and the origins of the universe and his inquisitive nature is making him always want to find answers. He is also able to stop and smell the roses, even if always on the run. He shares the passion to learn about the world him with Emma and Asher Lev, on different levels. Form all three of them, Huck seems the most lovable because of his innocence. He acts like a sponge who will absorb any piece of information he can find and then analyze it with the power of his mind and of his heart.