Defender Of The Faith

Essay 1

Jessica Leonard

In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Theodore Dreiser's Old Rogaum and His Theresa, the relationships of the children and fathers are quite similar. Both stories depict a father who feels the need to physically discipline their child to get a point across. The stories both show actions and reactions by the parents as well as the children to the situations presented in these stories.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain presents a father who believes that his son should be "tanned" for going to school and getting an education. Huck continued to go to school even though he had his father to deal with. "I'll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good."(p.231) Huck's father, whom he calls Pap, thinks that a son should not be smarter than his father "I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what he is."(p.231) Huck's father also threatened to take Huck away with him. "He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss." Old Ragaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser presents a father who believes that an 18 year old girl should not be out late at night, at least past 9:00PM. Her father would always call for her about that time and she would eventually come home to her father's hand on her backside telling her the next time she would be locked out.

"Muss ich all my time spenden calling, mit you de streeds oudt?" old Ragaum

would roar wrathfully, the while his fat hand would descend on her back.

"Take dot now. Vy don'd you come ven I call? In now, I vill show you. Und

come you yussed vunce more at dis time--ve vill see if I am boss in my own

house, aber! Komst du vun minute nach ten to-morrow and und vill see vot

you vill get. I vill ver door lock. Du sollst not in kommen. Mark! Oudt sollst du

stayen--oudt!" and he would glare wrathfully at her retreating figure."

(p.954)

Showing who was the boss of Huck, Pap eventually did kidnap him and took him off "...where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was."(p.233) Pap locked up Huck in this log hut and left him at home sometimes for days at a time. He was starting to beat Huck more and more.

"But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand it. I

was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in.

Once he locked me in and was gone three days."(p.234)

Theresa's father finally did lock her out when she would not come one night when he called for her. When she did get home that night and found the door locked her father would still not open the door even when she called out. "Again the door rattled, and still she got no answer. Not even her call brought a sound."(p.956)

After leaving Huck alone for some time and beating him whenever Pap felt like it, Huck figured out a way to escape. Huck found "...an old rusty wood-saw without any handle...and went to work."(p.234) One day after Pap left for town Huck finished sawing out and ran off making it look as if the hut had been robbed and Huck had been murdered.

"I took the axe and smashed in the door--I beat it and hacked it

considerable, a-doing it. I fetched the pig in and took him back...to the table

and hacked his throat...and laid him down on the ground to bleed...I pulled

out some of my hair, and bloodied the ax good, and stuck it on the back side,

and slung the ax in the corner."(p.239)

When Theresa was not able to get her father to let her into the house she hurt and angry so she left and started walking back corner where "Connie" was, her "boyfriend". She took her boyfriend's advice and "Teach 'em a lesson...We'll walk around a while an' make 'em think yuh mean business. They won't lock yuh out anymore."(p.957)