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=The Want For A Better Life:=

= = From the beginnning of time people have been on a search for a better life. Whether it be an escape from slavery, or a search for land, people everywhere have at some point in time choosen to set out and find the life they were looking for. The problem is, or what Twain thought the problem was, is that people have this idea that the life they imagine can actually exist. They don't realize that their ideal lives can never be anything more than hopes and dreams.

Free Northern Blacks: A better life?


It is unarguable that slavery in the South was one of the cruelest institutions ever to scar the face of this planet. Many slaves held a false hope that they could escape to the North where a better life awaited them. However, as many of them soon found out, this new life of "Northern Freedom" was unlike they had imagined. Free blacks in the North were placed lower on the social ladder than white indentured servants. They in no way got the freedom they were looking for. On the contrary, they ended up in a whole new world of oppression. No, they were not being forced to work on plantations or being separated from their families, but they were being forced to live in a community where they had no say and had an extremely hard time finding a job.

"Strictly speaking, none of them was "free," for their lives were proscribed politically, economically, and socially. While white indentured servants often became respected members of their communities after their indentures ended, free blacks in the North rarely had the opportunity to rise above the level of common laborers and washerwomen, and as early as 1760 they had formed ghettoes in the grimy alleys and waterfront districts of Boston and other Northern towns."

The Donner Party: Not a Very Happy Ending


"With the publication of books, letters and guidebooks proclaiming California to be a paradise, emigrants began to head west. Lansford W. Hastings' __The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California__ made the trip sound easy. His suggested cutoff to save time and distance led to one of the most horrific episodes in California's history. The Donner Party's disastrous winter in the Sierra Nevadas in 1846 still holds people's attention. After all these years, people are still trying to discover more about these unfortunate pioneers."

By now everyone should know the story of the Donner Party and how after becoming trapped in the Sierra Nevada's on their way to California they had to resort to cannibalism. They ironic part of this horrible story, is that on a journey to a better life one group of pioneers had to endure horrible circumstances. Resorting to cannibalism in the freezing snow was probably not the happy ending that they had in mind.

This is exactly what Twain satirizes in Huck Finn, the fact that people can be so unrealistically optimistic to the point of being delusional. They don't see the dangers along the way; they just see that "perfect" life at the end of a peaceful and short journey. Everyone seems to be looking for something better than what they have, which more often than not leads to disaster and hardship.

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