Dear Huckleberry Finn

Dear Huckleberry Finn,

I hope you fare well after your series of misadventures. Time and again you decided to listen to you heart and not betray your earnest companion Jim. You were brought up in a difficult childhood. Your father lived day by day, with no aspiration beyond coveting that next bottle of whiskey. From him you learned to look after no one but yourself. Then you had a brief period under Widow Douglass’ tutoring, and she tried to instil in you good conduct. But alas, all these would not prepare you, for the difficult choices you would soon make. It pained me Huck, when you felt that you were doing wrong to listen to your heart. Being some years your senior, I feel compelled to guide you, to console you. We failed you Huck, in not bringing you up well. We failed you Huck, that you felt what you had to do was wrong.

I am you, Huckleberry Finn.

I am now a boy. There is so much fun to be had, if only they would leave me alone. They are boring and uncreative; can they not see the fun I am having? They try to educate me, but really I just want to play. Let them not see this, or I shall get a beating once again. I do not like them, but still I would acquiesce; for who else takes care of me? The scoldings and punishments, they all mean to teach me. That I could tell right from wrong, that I could do always the right. Now, I come to associate some behaviours with praise and some others with shame. Do what brings praise, avoid what brings shame–such a straightforward way to think! But one day I find this insufficient. I must think for myself, and do sometimes what I came to think was wrong.