Never explain yourself.

Your friends don’t need it and your enemies

won’t believe it. Society teaches everyone in many ways, either good or bad. In both The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and “Stand By Me” this is true, society teaches

the kids hypocrisy, discrimination and determination.

To begin, Discrimination can be the deciding factor between be the greatest person ever

or nothing at all. Huck discriminates against Jim, who later becomes his best friend. Vern, Teddy,

Chris, and Gordy learn about discrimination, after escaping from a mad farmer, the farmer calls

Teddy’s Dad a “loony” and assumes that Teddy will be just like him. While the narrator talks

about how Chris’s family is a bunch of tough-hearted, wrong-doers, and Chris will be just like

them. At first, Huck sees Jim as just somebody he can treat badly, because no one else would

care, especially not society: “Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck??”, after Huck got lost in the

fog, and eventually finding Jim again, he tricks Jim because he assumes that it won’t matter

anyways..Everyone is discriminated against at least once in their life, but, society determines if

its bad or not in both the book and movie.

Secondly, a teacher is: a role model, a leader, yet, they are society, and teach the kids in

“Stand By Me” about hypocrisy and how cruel it can be, while Huck learns about it through

Widow Douglass. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Widow Douglas yells at Huck for

wanting to smoke tobacco “Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But

she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any

more”, however, she herself chews tobacco. In “Stand By Me”, the teachers are supposed to be

leaders, but, they’re hypocrites saying “he’s always late, just like how his family used to be”.

Hypocrisy affects peoples judgment of another.

 Finally, obstacles come our way everyday, its how we get over them or how quickly you

stand back up and dust yourself off that shows what your made of. One of the few good things

society teaches the boys is determination, In “Stand by Me” society teaches the kids how to

survive through a night: making fires, a place to sleep, knowing to keep watch and all without

their family beside them, just friends. Likewise, in The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Huck

uses lessons taught to him and stories that he’s heard or read to formulate a plan to escape from

Pap and make it seem like he was killed: “I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly to the

table and hacked into his throat with the ax, and laid him down on the ground to bleed: I say

ground because it was ground—hard packed, and no boards.” (P. 30) A little determination can

be the deciding factor between being “sivilized” or free..

Discrimination, determination and hypocrisy are all effected by society, making new

friends and learning to triumph over adversity. The effects are portrayed through the kids in

“Stand By Me” and through Huck, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. You’re friends need

no explanation, and your enemies won’t believe you.