Character Growth in Huck Finn, Emma, and Asher Lev

Introduction: Three Protagonists on a Path to Self-Awareness

To understand the characters and the way they evolve throughout these novels, it is first necessary to establish their roles in the course of the narrative.

Mark Twain's main character, Huckleberry Finn, is a teenager who undergoes a total moral transformation throughout his journey toward a new life, having to use his own judgment to make fundamental decisions that will seriously affect his entire existence.

The second protagonist, Emma, is a young, beautiful, clever, and confident character who exercises her influence in a constricted and complex environment. She possesses a power of manipulating everyone around her and a disposition to think a little too well of herself, but she will eventually perceive the dangers that her own self-satisfaction presents.

The third protagonist, Asher Lev, is a very gifted young boy born into a Hasidic Jewish family that from the very beginning does not agree with his talent. In the end, due to its religious and almost fanatical beliefs, the community sends their son into exile in Paris.

In all three novels — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Emma by Jane Austen, and My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok — we are dealing with characters who are not flat, who find themselves in an ongoing process of transformation until they finally discover the way to self-awareness. Huck must undergo important moral changes and make life-defining decisions in order to discover himself and establish his own ethical beliefs. Emma is a character whose well-defined financial status allows her to play the matchmaker and control other people's lives; although she feels entitled to do so, she will eventually learn from her mistakes and change her attitude when she realizes that her arrogance and vanity are doing no good. Asher Lev, set against the conflict between his community's religious beliefs and his art, succeeds in developing himself as an appreciated artist capable of expressing his deepest feelings, ultimately reaching self-awareness.

In each novel we witness a protagonist's growth, and this process of growing is supported by literary elements such as conflict, theme, and characterization, which enhance the evolution of the characters. Conflict helps the reader perceive the struggle that each character must overcome, whether with himself or with something or someone around him. Theme as a literary device reflects how people naturally express ideas and feelings through their behaviors; the characters' actions and the events of the story are used to suggest broader meanings. Characterization is a major literary device that helps the reader perceive the characters' goals, ambitions, and values, and the way these elements change along with the protagonists' evolutions.

Plot Overviews of the Three Novels

Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an escaped enslaved man named Jim. In the course of their journey, Huck and Jim experience many adventures, dangerous situations, and encounters with all sorts of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious. Although some of the incidents in the novel are funny in themselves, most of the humor is found in Huck's manner of expression and in his entire worldview. By the end of the novel, both Huck and Jim find their long-desired freedom: Jim decides to try to buy his wife and child out of slavery, while Huck is determined to head west for another adventure.

Emma by Jane Austen presents its protagonist, Emma Woodhouse, as a wealthy, pretty, and self-satisfied young woman who is left alone with a hypochondriac father after her mother's death. Her governess, Miss Taylor, marries a neighbor, Mr. Weston, and — blind to her own feelings — Emma decides to play the matchmaker with her friends and neighbors. She takes Harriet Smith, an illegitimate girl of no social status, as her protégée and tries to manipulate a marriage between Harriet and Mr. Elton, a young clergyman who has in fact set his eyes on Emma. She meets Frank Churchill, Mr. Weston's son, for whom she believes she has some feelings. When Harriet shows interest in Mr. Knightley, a neighbor who had been Emma's mentor and friend, Emma reconsiders her own attitude. She has always regarded Mr. Knightley as belonging to her, and she eventually finds her destiny in marriage with him. Harriet, left alone to decide for herself, marries Robert Martin, a young farmer.

Chaim Potok's novel My Name Is Asher Lev presents Asher Lev as a Hasidic Jew with an extraordinary talent for art. As he recollects his childhood and teenage years — where most of the plot is spent — readers can perceive how the differences between the creative young Asher and his traditional father, Aryeh, are built. Asher's father does not approve of his son's hobby or talent, and neither does the wider Jewish community, but with the help of mentor Jacob Kahn, Asher works to develop his artistic gifts. In a world torn between his father's conservative approach and Asher's genius, Asher must eventually leave in order to fulfill himself as a true artist.

Conflict as a Literary Device

A first comparative point regarding these three novels is the conflict that each protagonist must overcome. In Twain's novel we are dealing with a conflict of person against society, which arises because the protagonist is in conflict with the values of his community. At the beginning of the novel, Huck struggles against society's attempts to civilize him, represented by the Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and others.

Describing his brief stay with the Widow Douglas after she adopts him, Huck expresses his lack of interest in her attempts to educate him: "After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people" (Chapter 1, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library).

Later, this conflict between Huck and society gains greater focus in his dealings with Jim. Huck must decide whether to turn Jim in, as society demands, or instead to protect and help his friend. He decides that going to "hell" — if that is what following his own instincts rather than society's hypocritical ones requires — is a better option than going to heaven: "It was a close place. I took... up [the letter I'd written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: All right then, I'll go to hell — and tore it up" (Chapter 31, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library).

Another type of conflict — an internal one, or person against self — is experienced by Emma. She struggles to shed her vanity, her ignorance, and her fear of confronting her own feelings, all of which lead her to misunderstand those around her and to meddle harmfully in their lives. Though Emma is never entirely cured of her impulse to make matches for others, at one point in the novel she rightly diagnoses what is wrong with her matchmaking: "the first error, and the worst, lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together.... She was quite concerned and ashamed and resolved to do such things no more" (Chapter 16, Pemberley e-text of Emma).

The same type of internal conflict is undergone by Asher Lev. He struggles within his Hasidic Jewish community to use and keep his great gift for drawing, as many see his artistic skills as a waste of time and, worse still, as sitra achra — a gift from the other side. Having moved into his own apartment in Paris, he reflects on his past and his parents, feeling simultaneously rejected by the community and still a part of it: "Away from my world, alone in an apartment that offered me neither memories nor roots, I began to find old and distant memories of my own, long buried by pain and time and slowly brought to the surface now" (SparkNotes, My Name Is Asher Lev).

Conclusion

By means of literary devices such as theme, characterization, and conflict, we have witnessed the growth of each character and traced the most significant moments throughout their evolutions.

All three characters are struggling to discover who they really are and what their roles in life should be. Although they are complex personalities living in very different social environments, what unites them is their journey toward self-awareness. Their quests for identity — however difficult the path — are ultimately and successfully accomplished.