Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn has the great advantage of being written in autobiographical form. Every scene in the book is given, not described, and the result is a vivid picture of Western life in the past. Before the novel begins, Huck Finn has led a life of absolute freedom. His alcoholic father was often missing and never paid much attention to him. Since Huck's mother is dead he is not used to following any rules. In the beginning, Huck is living with the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. Both women are fairly old and have no patience to raise a rebellious boy like Huck Finn. They try to make an attempt to make Huck into what they believe will be a better boy. Huck never really enjoys the life of manners, religion, and education that the Widow and her sister impose upon him. Huck decides to try and find freedom with his friend Tom Sawyer. A boy of Huck's age, Tom, promises Huck and other boys of the town a life of adventure. Huck really wants to join Tom's Gang because he feels that if he does join he will escape the boring life he leads with the Widow Douglas. Tom Sawyer promises many things, but unfortunately, such thing did not occur. Tom's adventures turned out imaginary. Huck is disappointed that the adventures Tom promises are not real, so along with the other members, he resigned from the gang. Another person who tries to get Huckleberry Finn to change is Huck's father. His father is very antisocial and wishes to do all of the civilizing effects that Widow and Miss Watson have attempted to change in Huck. Pap is a mess: his hair is uncut and hangs like vines in front of his face, he is unshaven, and his skin is very pale. Pap's looks reflects Huck's feelings as he demands that Huck quits school, stops reading, and avoids church. Huck managed to stay away from his father for a while, but Pap kidnaps him three or four months after Huck starts to live with the Widow and takes him to a lonely cabin deep in the Missouri woods. Once again, Huck enjoys the freedom that he had in the beginning of the book. Huck soon realizes that he will have to escape from the cabin if he wishes to remain alive. As a result, Huck makes it appear as if he was killed in the cabin while Pap was away. He leaves to go to a remote island in the Mississippi River, Jackson's Island. After, he leaves his father's cabin Huck meets Miss Watson's slave, Jim. Huck found Jim on Jackson's Island because the slave ran away because he overheard a conversation that he will soon be sold to New Orleans. Huck begins to realize that Jim has more talents and Intelligence than Huck. They begin to get to know eachother as they float on a raft down the Mississippi River. Huck begins to enjoy being with Jim and starts to care for him. In conclusion of chapter 11, Huck and Jim are forced to leave Jackson's Island because Huck discovers they are looking for a runaway slave. They have a friendship that is unseperable as hey keep drifting down the river as the novel continues. At the end of their journey, neither having anything left to run from as Huck's father was dead and Jim was a free man. IT would seem, then that Huck and Jim had run at thousand miles down the river and ended up where they had started from. Mark Twain is saying a lot of things in the story. First, the book stands by firmly saying slavery is bad mostly because it is hypocritical. It is well supported considering Huck is able to interact with Jim as a human being, while the southern slave society treats Jim as an object. Furthermore, the southerner representations are pale in comparison to Huck's wits and intelligence. For example, when the slave catchers who are tricked into thinking Jim is Huck's small pox riddled father, and the whole feud thing does not show much in the line of smarts for southern slave owners. On a superficial level Huckleberry Finn might appear to be racist. The first time you read the description of Jim it is a very negative description. Although Huck is not a racist child, he has been raised by extremely racist individuals who have ingrained some feelings of bigotry into his mind. In chapter six, Hucks father fervently objects to the governments granting of suffrage to an educated black professor. Twain wants the reader to see the absurdity in this statement. Huck's father believes that he is superior to this black professor simply because of the color of his skin. When Huck first meets Jim, he makes a enormous decision, not to turn Jim in. Many times throughout the novel Huck comes very close to rationalizing Jim's slavery. However, he is never able to see a reason why this man who has become on of his only friends, should be a slave. Through this struggle, Twain expresses his opinions of the absurdity of slavery and the importance of following one's personal conscience before the laws of society. In my opinion, Mark Twain is using race as a single element in his entire picture of the hypocrisy in his society. He isn't showing that the whole race issue as much as he is showing the society he lives in. He uses race to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the rich and the middle class, among other things. What other way does he show this then by demonstrating the facets of a society of snobby landowners then by showing the vulgarity of their vocabulary. The dialects of the people, white and black, what a study they are; and yet nobody talks for the sake of exhibiting a dialect. For instance, when they say "Niger." If Mark Twain is saying anything about race, he is making an allegorical statement complaining that the civil war did not end slavery. Also, that living conditions are still undesirable for most blacks. For example, when Jim was free for over two weeks, he suffered mostly when he had his freedom. Huck has an struggle with is conscience in regard to slavery. His conscience