Huck Finn

The theme of growth and maturity is portrayed heavily throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain which centers on Huck Finn, a rambunctious boy whose adventures with a runaway slave build him into a mature young man. The novel is a bildungsroman because it depicts the development and maturing of a young protagonist. In the first part of the story, Huck is seen as very immature. He struggles between doing what he wants and what society would have him do. On the raft, Huck realizes what his own beliefs are because of the people he meets in his journey. Huck?s biggest transformation is through his relationship with Jim. Although Huck isn?t a wonderful person, by the end of the book he

In “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, the main character Huck grows with his morals and maturity throughout the book. Huck Finn was a thirteen year old boy with a deadbeat drunk dad. Huck lived with his adoptive mother Widow Douglas, his care taker Miss. Watson, and her slave Jim. Huck shows a growth of maturity when he fakes his death to escape his father, when he helps Jim escape, and when he stands up to the king and duke. Throughout their adventure Huck Finn exemplifies a major growth of maturity and a deeper understanding of his morals.

In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, the main character Huck matures throughout the book due to a sense of growing morality and accepting responsibility for his actions. The character of Huckleberry Finn is introduced to the reader as a lower class, uneducated kid with no manners that is influenced by a greedy society. As the novel progresses Huck into a wonderful, strong character that has dug deep into what it means to be an individual, and by becoming mature, he has also escaped from the negative way society depicts African Americans.

In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Mark Twain follows protagonist, Huck Finn throughout his endeavors. This coming of age story displays Huck’s actions that lead to him running away from home. From a young age, Huck is forced to become emotionally and physically autonomous due to his father’s alcoholism. Huck runs away and begins his adventure with fugitive slave, Jim. Together they meet a diverse range of individuals and families. Mark Twain illustrates Huck Finn’s character development by exposing him to different moral systems.

Throughout the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character, Huck goes through major changes. The story is set before the Civil War in the South. Huck is a child with an abusive father who kidnaps him from, Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, the people he was living with. He eventually escapes from his father and finds Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave. As Huck travels with Jim, Huck begins to realize that Jim is more than a piece of property. During the travel down the river, Huck makes many decisions that reflect his belief that Jim deserves the same rights he has. Because of these realizations, Huck chooses to do the right thing in many instances. Some of these instances where Huck does the right thing instead of society’s

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a variety of people influence Huck’s ideology. From the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson’s religious rhetoric to Pap’s brutal, uncivilized manner, many contrasting ideas shape Huck’s belief system. However, among these people, Tom Sawyer holds the greatest impact over Huck’s actions and mentality because of Huck’s immense admiration for him. Huck’s initial encounters with Tom Sawyer establish Tom as a major component of the ideology Huck maintains throughout his journey. Despite Huck’s skepticism and confusion about Tom’s imaginative schemes, Huck regards Tom’s judgements as the truth and follows all of Tom’s plans.

"I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead" (221). Mark Twain's, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," is a tale about a boy in search for a family and a place he can truly call home. Through his adventure, he rids himself of a father that is deemed despicable by society, and he gains a father that society hasn't even deemed as a man. This lonely and depressed young boy only finds true happiness when he is befriended with a slave named Jim. Although Huck Finn was born and raised into a racially oppressive society, it is through his personal growth that he realizes that the color of skin does not make a man, and he finds a father and true happiness in Jim.

Because blacks are uneducated, he sees them as stupid and stubborn. He frequently tells stories to Jim, mainly about foreign kings and history. When Jim disagrees with Huck, Jim becomes very stubborn and refuses to listen to explanations. Huck eventually concludes, "You can't learn a nigger to argue". Jim also seems to accept that whites are naturally superior to blacks. He knows that Huck is far smarter than he is. When Tom Sawyer and Huck are planning an elaborate breakout for Jim, he allows their outrageous plan to continue because they "was white folks and knowed better than him". This mutual acceptance of whites as superior to blacks shows how deeply rooted slavery was in Southern culture. This made it very difficult for Huck to help Jim. When Tom Sawyer says he will help free Jim, Huck is very disappointed. He had never thought that Tom Sawyer, of all people, would be a "nigger stealer". Huck had always considered Tom respectable and educated, and yet Tom was prepared to condemn himself to damnation by freeing a runaway slave. This confuses Huck greatly, who no longer knows what to think about his situation with Jim. When Huck is forced to make a decision regarding slavery, he invariably sides with his emotions. Huck does not turn Jim in, despite having several chances. His best chance to do what he believes is right comes as they are rafting towards Cairo, Illinois. Huck finally

believes Jim to be inappropriate and stubborn at times, as in their exchange over the Biblical story of King Solomon and the French language. Huck doesn’t tell Jim but says to the reader,“ If he got a notion in his head once, there warn’t no getting it out again…I see it warn’t no use wasting words – you can’t learn a nigger to argue” (76-79).

Character development is used in Huck Finn to represent an idealistic lifestyle of any young child, but eventually begins to form into the rest of society. Huck has no active relationships other than the one with his drunken and absentee father, and has the freedom to do whatever he pleases. He is admired by all the other kids as a symbol of freedom and a perfect lifestyle. Nonetheless Huck begins to change throughout the story, and fit into the typical structure of most children in the story. While most adult despise Huck Mr. Jones welcomes him with open arms, into his home. The sudden change in events begins to reform Huck and starts a very drastic change in his character. Although Tom begins the story despising the actions of the so called “model boy”, although he senses the change in his character by

Twain, an American writer and author of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, establishes in his book how a boy is “coming of age” through his applying of Huck’s personality towards Jim a slave with whom he has run away with. Huck is cautious through his traveling up the river in order to make sure that neither he or Jim get caught and taken back, but his most concern most of the time is Jim since he is a runaway slave who if caught will be taken back into slavery. In the 31st chapter of this book, Huck feels that he is doing wrong by stealing Jim from Miss Watson, and what consequences he might face if he does not turn back, but he displayed how he doesn't care happened to him. He then decides to proceed with adventure not caring what might happen to him if he keeps going, and this, therefore, displays how Huck has is maturing and is willing to accept the consequences in order to help Jim escape. In this way, Twain indicates how Huck has started “coming of age”.

The dissection of the immorality of society is further explored in Tom Sawyer’s scheme to free Jim from the Phelpses’ captivity. Tom, seemingly eager to help Jim escape, creates a plan that seems to exist more for his own amusement than for Jim’s emancipation, a plan that eventually ends in Jim’s recapture and Tom’s injury. Thus, Tom’s plan to free Jim takes on a dark irony as Huck says that Tom is “not mean, but kind”; this is subverted when we discover that Tom has used Jim as a plaything in his game of escape (Evans). Tom and Huck, both boys of about the same age and with similar backgrounds, are a good example of the difference that “sivilized” society makes on the development of the individual. As Tom and Huck plan Jim’s escape, the two represent very different places in their development as individuals; Huck having discovered a new morality through his journey down the Mississippi, and Tom having remained more or less the same as his introduction at the beginning of the novel. While Huck has demonstrated his ability to more fully realize individuals, notably Jim, Tom has been conditioned by society to see slaves as subhuman, and thus has no problem with using Jim as a plaything in his game of adventure. This trivialization of human life, presented by the “civilized” and “kind” Tom, demonstrates the immorality and toxicity of Southern society. Twain also comments on the hypocrisy

While he understands the need to work quickly, he doesn’t care enough to simplify his plan, instead opting for having fun at Jim’s expense in the meantime. More interestingly, however, the way in which Tom frames the entire situation is mimicked by Huck during the aforementioned case-knife scene. Huck uses the same altered version of ‘morality’ as Tom, indicating that while he is still in favour of getting Jim out quickly, he contextualizes the problem in the same way that Tom does, whose views on the subject have already been shown to be ethically dubious. Although his specific perspective differs from Tom’s, the way in which he is interpreting the problem at hand speaks volumes about his change in attitude. A mere few chapters prior when Huck said “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”, Jim’s enslavement was a real threat, and it corresponded to an incredibly difficult ethical dilemma in Huck’s mind (Twain, 214). In contrast, the issue in Trying to Help Jim has been rendered abstract, and consequently neither Huck nor Tom take the problem with the appropriate gravity or

Huck eventually rescued Jim using a simple plan. This shows that Huck is mature enough to understand that a friend's life is in danger, and they need to really save him, not play around, even though his best friend is against his plan. "But it's too blame simple; there ain't nothing to it. What's the good of the plan that ain't no more trouble than that?"

Huck states to Judge Thatcher "Please take it, and don't ask me nothing—then I won't have to tell no lies” (16). That quote is said by Huck to Judge Thatcher when Huck finds his pap is in town and pap will try to take his money. The Maturation of Huckleberry Finn is important because its about Huck making the right decisions to help him and Jim to freedom. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, begins with Huck introducing himself. He is wild and carefree, playing jokes on people and believing them all to be hilarious. When his adventures grow to require more maturity than ever, there is a drastic change in his opinions, thoughts, and his views of "right and wrong". By the time the book is over, it is apparent that he has matured greatly since the introduction of the novel. Mark Twain is making a point about Huck’s maturation; the specific point he is making is that even though Huck had a rough past he still does his best to make himself and his friend Jim a bright future. This analysis will include Hucks loyalty to Jim, Hucks bravery, and when Huck feels bad about his actions.