Theme of Death in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Sylvia Plath’s I Am Vertical (Essay Sample)

Death, a darkness that is all around us. It’s followed by the mystery of the afterlife that one seeks. The strongest emotions occur from death essentially, numbness, anger, guilt and pain. During the loss of a loved one, a series of emotions are created that focus on one emotion that empowers all the others. Death is typical, the occurrences of death are natural, accidental, homicidial, and suicidal. There are different perspectives on death; Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Sylvia Plath’s “I Am Vertical” express opposite outlooks on death through the word choice and structure of their writing. On one hand, Twain’s writing suggests death as a dismaying and appalling experience that occurs -- on the other hand, Plath’s poem embodies the joy and impactfulness death can have. Through both texts, the authors use diction and sensory details to show the characters views on death, Huck views death as a tragedy while the speaker in the poem views it as her escape to happiness.

Mark Twain and Sylvia Plath, the authors of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and “I Am Vertical” use sensory details to provide readers with a sense of imagery through specific diction. Sensory details are important because they allow the reader to smell, touch, feel, see and hear the speakers words. It gives them the opportunity to understand the character in a more in-depth manner. In chapter 18 of Mark Twain’s novel, he uses sensory details to permit the reader with Huck Finn’s feelings and opinions towards death. Huck views death as a tragedy and a misery that is very affective to others. He addresses his feelings by saying “It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain’t a going to tell all that happened-it would make sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night to such things, I ain’t ever going to get shut of them-lots of times I dream about them” (Twain 114). In this quote, Twain expresses Huck’s discomfort towards the death of Buck that he witnesses in the woods. He isn’t able to discuss what is happening because of the recurring dreams he is having because he feels that he is responsible for the death of Buck. The guilt that he feels is shared with the readers through Twain’s selection of words. In the same way, Sylvia Plath uses sensorial features in a further sense by equating the speakers perspective on death to nature. The speaker in Plath’s poem has a different viewpoint on death than Huck Finn does. While, Huck finds it as a misfortunate event, the speaker in the poem senses that death is her fate and is what she needs to feel welcomed. Being alive, the speaker feels alone and unimportant to everyone in her life. Unlike Twain’s novel, where Huck witnesses death the addresser wants to end her life because she feels that no one is there for her. Plath’s speaker asserted, “I walk among them, but none of them are noticing,” (Plath ll 12) which reveals that others aren’t noticing what she is going through. She continues by divulging “And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me” which signifies that she had the understanding that if she is no longer alive she will be one with nature by being buried in the ground. Sylvia Plath uses personification to guide the reader to comprehend the feelings of the speaker. In brief, the writers uses the senses to help the audience understand how the characters feel about death from their standpoint.

In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the poem, “I Am Vertical” are written to illustrate the different interpretations on death through the author’s phrases that create the tone of the text. Both texts have a similar yet different tone that helps inform readers how the narrator feels. Within The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain writes in a dark and low-spirited tone to fall in with Huck’s sentiments on the death of Buck, who he got along with instantly. He feels accountable since he passed the note with the words “Half-past two” between Miss Sophia and Harney though he didn’t know what the significance of the message. Huck’s struggles cause him to say “I reckoned I was to blame, somehow,” he is so devastated about Buck that he held himself accountable. At the same time, Sylvia Plath’s poem also has a dark tone that is created by her sufferings and her desire to end her life to receive the benefits that she believes will occur. The speaker wants to feel love and affection which she doesn’t have from the people around her, so she wants to connect herself with nature to fill the emptiness. She trusts that she will have what she wants if she becomes one with nature, “Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping/I must most perfectly resemble them--/Thoughts gone dim./It is more natural to me, lying down” (Sylivia ll 13-15). The speaker implies that passing away is her destiny and is where she belongs to “fit in.” The two authors, Mark Twain and Sylvia Plath both use tone to allow the reader to grasp how the characters feel and how they are portrayed. 

With this purpose in mind, both the poem and the novel have elocution and imagery that are used to display the character’s thoughts and feelings toward death, one who views it as a tribulation while the other views it as a path to satisfaction. People have several dissimilar views on death because they have gone through different experiences that can be interpreted through the use of senses and tone. Humans have different values that affect their opinion on death and their values derive from the occurrences throughout their lifetime. To conclude, the author’s choice of words affect the tone and the details that build on to the theme of the text.