Symbolism In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

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Mark Twain is one of the greatest prose writers in American history. He has written many famous novels such as, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain, in fact, was not his real name. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Mark Twain was more of a stage name for him. In, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck gets abused by his own father and fakes his own death. He then meets an escaped slave named Jim who travels around with him on his journey. Huck and Jim travel down the Missouri River on a raft and undergo many adventures. Jim is then captured and sold to the family of Huck’s childhood friend, Tom Sawyer. Tom then hatches a wild plan to free …show more content…

The raft was a place where Huck and Jim could talk and get to know each other man-to-man and not master-to-slave. It was a place where race didn’t matter. They were equals. Huck said, "We… let her [the raft] float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things—we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us" Huck did not care that Jim was black; Jim did not care that Huck was white. Floating down the middle of the river just might be the only place this black man and white boy can speak together as equals. For this reason, the raft is a very important symbol. Huck can also be seen as a symbol for America in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Huck says that he 's got to "Light out for the territory ahead of the rest," This indicates that he 's taking on the role of the pioneer: heading out to new, untamed country. Huck does not want to be a “sivilized” man. When one place becomes somewhat “sivilized”, he moves to a new frontier. Like most early Americans, Huck was smart but uneducated, a little wild but honest and moral, and not too fond of table manners. So Huck was like most early American

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