Huck Finn Analysis
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A Critical Analysis
SECTION I- Chapters 1 through 11
The book introduces Huck as the first person narrator which is important because it establishes clearly that this book is written from the point of view of a young, less than civilized character. His character emerges as a very literal and logical thinker who only believes what he can see with his own eyes. In this section Huck’s life with the Widow Douglas and her attempts to raise him as a civilized child sets up the main theme of this book which is the struggle or quest for freedom. Huck’s struggle for freedom from civilized society is paralleled by Jim’s struggle to escape from slavery. Irony as a key literary element in this novel is apparent in this chapter and is primarily expressed through Huck’s sarcasm. A major element of superstition is introduced and continues throughout the entire book. This superstition is used to give insight into Huck’s character, which is very naive and gullible, as well as foreshadow events. For example the killing of the spider in chapter 1 and, in a later chapter, the spilling of the salt does result in bad luck in the form of Pa coming home. Twain puts together an interesting juxtaposition of theft with honor when Tom Sawyer establishes his robber band with Huck and the other boys and they swear to their code of ethics. Interestingly, this is also paralleled at the end of the book when Tom is able to help steal Jim “honorably” because Jim is already a free man. Throughout this section, Huck’s character and personality is established. He is revealed as humble in that he constantly underplays his own intelligence. An example is when he plans his own death and then whi...
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...y Miss Watson in her will. Jim’s struggles had not been necessary for him to be free but had been for the emotional growth of Huck and his freedom from society’s view of slavery. Huck is also revealed to be free from Pap as it is finally reported to him that his father was the dead person found on the river. The ending of the novel, however, finds Huck still in the same place of trying to escape civilization but Huck is no longer seen as the poor uneducated boy rather intelligent young man who does not want to be part of the middle class hypocrisy. The most profound change throughout the book is the view of Jim and thus of slavery. At first Jim is a background character as are all slaves, his importance as a human being surfaced throughout the book as well as the strength of his character. Through this change Twain sends a strong message about slavery to his reader.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is the narrator. The character of Huck Finn was very different than the society that he was born into. Mr. Twain uses Huck’s open mindedness as a window to let humor and the book’s points and morals shine through. Huck always takes things very literally. This not only adds to the humor of the book, but it also lets some of the books deeper messages come through. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, traces the story of a young man, Huck Finn, from conformity to the Southern way of thinking, to his own ideas about religion, wealth and slavery.
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn explores the morality of Huckleberry Finn, a daring, young teen growing up in Missouri, who rafts down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave. While Huck travels, he is met with many adventures and problems that test his morality such as deciding whether or not to turn Jim, a runaway slave, into Miss Watson, Jim’s owner. When met with challenges, Huck constantly makes the righteous choice. Yet, because Huck lacks a civil upbringing, he never recognizes his morality and believes himself to be a degenerate even though he demonstrates sound virtue.
In this whole world, there is only one thing people are fighting over for, and that is freedom. In the Huckleberry Finn the main theme is also based on freedom. Huck and Jim they both are from different social class and have different characteristics, but as a human being they both are fighting for freedom. Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn illustrates the characteristic of Huck and Jim. Jim is more mature, while Huck is more of a developing character, but they are both running away from their society in search of freedom.
Huck struggles with himself through his moral beliefs. Huck struggles with himself because he grows up in the lower class and when he moves in with the Widow it is hard for him to adjust to the life of the upper class. Huck is speaking to the reader at the beginning of the novel about events that have occurred in the previous novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huck explains how he was adopted by The Widow Douglas and how she tried to civilize him. “The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time … when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out … But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back” (2). This passage shows how Huck is being civilized by the widow and since he is from the lower class ...
Tom is intelligent, creative, and imaginative, which is everything Huck wishes for himself. Because of Tom's absence in the movie, Huck has no one to idolize and therefore is more independent. Twain's major theme in the novel is the stupidity and faults of the society in which Huck lives. There is cruelty, greed, murder, trickery, hypocrisy, racism, and a general lack of morality. All of these human failings are seen through the characters and the adventures they experience. The scenes involving the King and Duke show examples of these traits.
“You’re educated, too they say-can read and write. You think you’re better’n your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t”(30). This piece of evidence displays how people were thought of as a higher status if they were educated during this time. Huck’s father feels like people who are educated act like they are better than him. He thinks that Huck is acting like a know-it-all which makes him feel inferior towards Huck. Huck’s father is angry because he does not want his own son to be smarter than him and he is jealous of Huck. This quote also implies that when Huck’s father was a child it was more difficult for him to get an education than it was for Huck.
Throughout the beginning and midsection of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain illustrates the adventures of Huck and Tom cruising down the river. On this journey, through their many adventures and mishaps, Huck develops a more sympathetic view towards Jim, and changes from a child-like persona to a more adult person. By the time the story has reached the moral climax in Chapter XXXI, Huck has matured in his ways, and grown to see Jim the former slave as more than a piece of property.
In the novel Huck continually tells stories to get himself out of tight situations. Why doesn’t this bother Huck’s conscience? In what way is Huck forced to tell a lie? Is Huck morally wrong in doing so? Defend your argument with examples from the novel.
During the time, under social normality, it was neither acceptable nor tolerable for Huck to build such a sincere relationship with a castaway slave like Jim. When he has his first opportunity to send Jim back to Miss Watson, Huck makes his first notable decision that society would not side with. Huck is aware that Jim is technically Miss Watson’s property, but after hearing from Jim about Jim’s family and his aspirations to be free, Huck cannot bring himself to turn him in. Huck later illustrates this bond with Jim after the duke and the dauphin sell Jim to the Phelps family. Huck is left with a morally challenging decision whether to leave Jim behind or to help him escape. The climax of the novel is when Huck is writing the letter to Miss Watson to tell that Jim should be returned to her, and instead of sending it to her; he crumples it up and says he’d rather go to hell. Twain makes this moment the climax to prove to the reader Huck has morally developed and is capable of going against society. Through action, Huck demonstrates he is content with siding with
...d his adventure with Jim on the hero’s journey, he now sees the world a different way, a different way that may cause Huck severe consequences if society became involved. Huck believes his ways are right and the society’s ways are wrong. Today the society we live in was Huck’s perspective in the years before the Civil war. Back then during that time society was more strict and involved in slavery. The way we think and act today would probably
When Huck finds out he has been duped by the King and Duke and Jim has been sold to slave traders Huck goes on a mission to set Jim free stating “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” as his proclamation. Even though society tells him that is the wrong choice Huck believes betraying someone as good as Jim is a worse fate than going to hell. Huck’s transition from prejudice to acceptance of Jim gives light to the immoral act that is slavery.
In chapter 8 the key part being Huck stumbling upon Jim who ran away because Miss Watson was planning on selling him. This further reinforces the major theme of freedom and civilization between Huck and Finn. Chapter 12 introduces the river again but in a rough sense by the shores yet peaceful, as both Huck and Jim now travel down Mississippi. Chapters 14-16 defines Huck and Jim’s relationship as well as what they are capable of separately and together, their strengths and their weaknesses, as Jim proves to be more practical while Huck can read to an extent. Chapters 15 and 16 especially focuses on the complex nature of race as Huck is torn between protecting Huck as a friend but assisting a slave as an unnatural reflex which furthers the theme of slavery and race as a whole. The rest of the chapters further touches on the complex nature of friendship and race, as chapters 42-43 detail how Jim’s freedom is almost compromised as he tries to sacrifice himself for Tom as Huck once did to
While adventuring in the wild, Huck feels free from societal expectations, but his encounters with other people along the river remind him that humanity is deeply flawed. On the river, Huck’s encounter with slave-catchers irreversibly sets him on a path to seeing slavery’s hypocrisy. After realizing he is technically helping a runaway slave escape, he says,“I got to feeling so mean and miserable I most wished I was dead” (Twain 89). Clearly, society’s ideals have a strong hold on his moral core. Although he may not understand their opinions, the people around him still affect his values. This is seen as Huck struggles between his own moral conscience and societal expectations. Influenced by the behavior of people around him, he even looks down
In the beginning of the book Twain has Huck understand and accept the characters and the ideas they represent. Hucks reaction, however, to these same characters changes as he starts to symbolize the transcendentalism movement. Twain shows this with the development of Hucks opinion of the romantic movement, Tom Sawyer. In the earlier chapters of Huckleberry
The ending of the book was something that I felt was executed well by Twain. If I was to have the option to change it I would not. This is due to how Twain was able to make the book as a whole interlink and flow spectacularly, with the ending having readers gain insights into other parts of the book. For example, the development of Huck throughout the book was steadily increasing, as he began to feel bad about the tricks that he was pulling on people and told them the truth. This is seen with Mary Jane, when Huck told her the truth about the duke and dauphin. This maturity is lastly exhibited when Huck begins to realize that Tom is not someone that he should look up to, at the end of the book it is even like Huck looks down on Tom for his attitude.