My article for Imaginative Conservative this week is an essay on the tale of two orphans: Huck Finn an Pip from Dickens’ Great Expectations
Both Pip and Huck are faced with similar difficulties. Pip is apprenticed to a blacksmith and dominated by his harpy of a sister, while Huck is trapped in the stifling atmosphere of Widow Douglas’ and the sinister spinster, Miss Watson. Both boys seek their fortune by trying to escape. Pip uses the money from a mysterious benefactor to run upriver to London, where he affects being a gentleman, while Huck flees downriver away from both Widow Douglas and his abusive father. Faced with the pressures of impending adulthood, the adolescent orphan runs away into a grandiose dream or takes flight from reality and responsibility to enjoy what promises to be one long, lazy float down the river.
Go here to read the full article.
Image via Imaginative Conservative
