The moment we are born into the
world, we are as innocent and pure as we will ever be. We know little to
nothing, and everything is open to be taught to us. The learning curve is very
fast though, and we catch on
and adapt to our surroundings remarkably quickly.
We are taught good from bad from everything we experience. These experiences
shape our principal beliefs and mentality towards others and eventually dictate
our lifestyles and decisions we make. One does not come into the world
believing one’s race, culture, or lifestyle is superior to another, but rather,
it is one’s environment and the opinions and views of those close around them
that often influence them to develop similar beliefs as these peers as they grow
older. But what happens when people are pulled out of these environments? What happens
when there are minimal outside influences? How are things different without the
pressure from society to conform and act towards specific groups of people in
certain ways? When Huck Finn from
Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn finds himself away from civilization and spending his
days with a black man named Jim, many of his previous beliefs are challenged.
Away from other people, they are able to develop an actual friendship and enjoy
each other’s company. When faced with the decision to turn Jim in as a runaway
slave, Huck finds himself feeling confused and questioning if he did the right
thing by deciding to not turn in Jim. Although he felt “bad and low, because
[he] knowed very well [he] had done wrong” by the standard of the white men
back home, he knew that if he had done the opposite and turned in Jim he would
have felt “just the same way” (Twain 102). Huck is left
with these mixed
feelings due to the environment he lived in and experiences he encountered
throughout his whole life, pressuring him to share similar beliefs to the white
men back home who opposed blacks. Huck, however, was not born with a racist
intuition, but instead was exposed and brought up in an environment where
treating blacks with little respect, and giving them little freedom was widely accepted
and not questioned. If Huck’s mind and feelings toward Jim could change so
drastically in such a short period of time, then what state would our world be
in today if we were not influenced from a young age to act or think a certain
way? How would our lives be different? Would we even recognize ourselves?
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