Huck Finn Post 3

Huck's episode with the Grangerfords is very interesting due to it's melancholy mood, allusion to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and it's humor.
Although the story of Emmeline is supposed to be satirical, it is actually quite sad and depressing. The fact the the family "kept Emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked it" (Twain 106). Twain was making sattirical reference to the Victorian Age where everyone was facinated with death. Even though is is supposed to be mockery (a slight parody in fact), it is sad that the famly mourns over their relative so persistently. It is very eery and seems twisted. Also, another moment of sheer sadness is when Huck must cover Buck's dead body. " I cried a little when I was covering up Buck's face for he was mighty good to me" (Twain 117). Huck had grown so close to the young man and his family that to see them be torn apart and killed was a tremendous weigh tput on his conscience. Just the fact that Huck, a 13 or so year old boy, must deal with seeing so many people in his life killed is very depressing.
The Grangerfords also have an allusion of the classic romance play, Romeo and Juliet. Like in the tragic love story, Sophia falls in love Harney who is a member of the Grangerfords rival family, The Shepherdsons. Huck becomes involved when Miss Sophia asks him to go retrieve something from the chapel that she had left there. It turns out the book she left contained a note saying at what time they would meet to run away. Of couse, at the time that Huck read it he would never have guessed that is what the note was for or what it meant. Just like in Romeo and Juliet, the love of the two ends up creating a mess and ends with fatalities on both sides of the feuding fmilies. This time though, it ended not with the death of the lovers but of Hucks new friend Buck. "I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted, and then maybe he would 'a' locked her up, and this awful mess woldn't ever happened" (Twain 116). It is sad that Huck bears the weight of his death on his conscience, but it can be understood why.
Moreover, the episodes with the Grangerfords bear many moments of pure humor. One such example being when Buck tries to shoot Harney and Buck then has to explain what a feud is the Huck. What is so funny about this is that when Huck tries to understand what the feud is about, he asks what caused the families to fight like such and all Buck can say is "I reckon maybe-I don't know" (Twain 110). The two families have been feuding for decades and multiple generations, but it has been so long that they currently do not know what they are fighting over. The don't even know who began the feud, but they have no problems continuing what they were taught and fighting the other family. It is comical that they have no problem killing mulitple members of each family but thy do not even bother to see whether what began the feud was even woth killing one person over. Another moment of comedy is when Buck begins to speak of how brave the Shepherdsons are. The wording in which he puts it is what makes is so funny. "...becuz they don't breed any of that kind" (Twain 111) makes it sound like he is admiring their courage and saying that tey have no panzies in their family, but he still hates them so much for a reason that he doesn't know!