Epiphany In Huck Finn

An early indication of Huck maturing is when he feels guilty about playing a joke on Jim. This acceptance of knowing he did something mean shows that he has gained a sense of responsibility. Another major step in Huck's maturity is when he decides to give Mary Jane back her stolen money. Huck footnotes, “I felt so ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind’s made up; I’ll hive the money for them or bust”(177). By saying this, it shows guilt in Huck's heart for the King and Duke’s criminal activity, and it shows a sense of morality that is developing inside of Huck. This morality developing in Huck blossoms when he decides to go after Jim. Huck then and there concludes, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (215). This display of a moral compass is one of the novel's most important representations of Huck's growing maturity. A continuation of Huck's moral compass is his empathetic reaction when he sees the Duke and King tarred and feathered running from an angry mob. Huck remarks, “Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another” (232). Even though the Duke and King were criminals and liars, because of Huck's now established maturity, he feels sorrow for the

“If I get away, I sha’n’t be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I was here”. (142). When Huck tells Mary Jane the truth about the duke and the king he feels better about himself. Once he proves to Mary Jane that the duke and the king are frauds he tells her to leave town for a few days. “I got to steal that money somehow; and I got to steal it someway that they won’t suspicion that i done it”.

Huck shows his growth through his ability to understand that their religious beliefs are in conflict with their own actions. Huck learns even more about his own morals during his encounter with the King and the Duke. The King and the Duke lie about being the Wilks brothers in order to get money. For Huck, they cross the line when they lie to Mary Jane. Huck watches them cry for

While Huck does not revert to his arbitrary way of making decisions, he does decide to move West, which is uncomfortably reminiscent of his early tendency to run from his problems in order to evade dealing with them. The commonalities between Huck’s early actions and later ones could be interpreted two ways. One interpretation is that Huck knew what was moral all along, he simply let society take hold of his emotions and divert him from a moral path. The second interpretation is that by having such stark similarities between Huck’s early and late mortality, Twain is implying that humans, at their core, are not as superbly moral as they are portrayed in religion, for example. Independent of these interpretations; however, is another idea worth noting: Huck only made “good” decisions when he experienced just the right amount of empathy. For example, Huck witnesses the Duke and King being tarred and feathered and feels bad for them, so bad for them; in fact, that Huck begins to feel guilty despite obviously having no role in what happened to them. Similarly, Huck’s chronic feelings of lonesomeness and displacement have dual effects. Huck’s empathy does not begin to develop until he is displaced from society as he knows it. Prior to Huck’s physically leaving his

Huck goes along with it because he feels like he have to respect them. Huck has an immense conscience that gets to him every time he is in the wrong. For example Huck says, “I felt so ornery and lowdown and mean that I says to myself, my mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust” (177). Huck’s seeks innocence in this situation because he know what the king and the duke are doing is immoral. Huck also demonstrates innocence by stealing the money away from the duke and the king, however, he is justify because he is doing it for the greater purpose of protection for Peter Wilk’s

They wants to jump in, but I says: 'Don't you do it. I don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in-that 'll throw the dogs off the scent.'" (Twain 116) Huck acts like a Good Samaritan. Not only does Huck have pity upon these two men, he is also willing to take action and help them to safety. ""When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river-bank a piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and tugged at them till I Got then ashore; then I covered up their faces, and got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering up Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me." (Twain 112) Huck has empathy for humankind; he treats others as he wants to be treated. Huck overlooked a person's social status, race or respectability when reacting to a situation. Another example of Huck's tenderness towards other humans is his experience with Jim on the river. At the beginning of the voyage Huck viewed Jim as a piece of property, a true reflection of Southern mores. "It was fifteen minutes before I would work myself to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't even sorry for it afterward, neither." (Twain 84) Going against social mores takes a great deal of looking inside one's self. Being raised in a time and place where blacks were looked down upon, Huck found that going against what

He also sees how hypocritical they truly are, and, it can be inferred that, Twain wanted them to represent society in the novel. Huck thinks their way of living was ineffective, and that is why he used to sneak out in the middle if the night, skip school, and smoke his pipe. It was difficult for Huck to adjust from an unstructured home, with no training, raised by an alcoholic and abusive father, to two strict, cookie-cutter women in a house with plenty of rules and regulations. After earning a large amount of money as a reward, with his best friend, Tom Sawyer, Huck's abusive alcoholic father, who he calls Pap, comes back to steal his money by kidnapping him, and while Huck is with his father he says, "I didn't see how I ever got to like it so well at the Widow's, where you had to wash, and eat in a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old Miss Watson peeking at you all the time" (Twain p. 37). Huck's view on society is one of dissatisfaction and rebellion, as his opinions reveal how imperfect, and unjust society's rules actually are. Especially after hearing that his behavior will determine whether or not he will go to Heaven or Hell scares him a little bit, because he wasn’t taught right from wrong his entire life up until this point. After this Huck's thoughts are, how can a man not be punished by law (his father), for abusing him, but Huck can be reprimanded for harmless things like

The first adventure Huck and Jim take part in while searching for freedom is the steamboat situation. Huck shows development of character in tricking the watchman into going back to the boat to save the criminals. Even though they are thieves, and plan to murder another man, Huck still feels that they deserve a chance to live. Some may see Huck's reaction to the event as crooked but, unlike most of society, Huck Finn sees good in people and attempts to help them as much as he can. Getting lost in the fog while floating down the Mississippi River leads to a major turning point in the development of Huck Finn's character. Up to this event, he has seen Jim as a lesser person than himself. After trying to deny the fog event to Jim, he says, "It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a [slave]; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterward, neither"(74). He continues by explaining how he could never do such a thing again. Huck has clearly gained respect for Jim here and shows it by feeling so horrible over what he did.

In the middle of the book, Huck starts to distinguish what is the right thing to do. He starts to think if all the things he was doing before with Jim and Tom were too mean and stupid to do. One specific example is when he decides to steal the money that the king and duke have, “I got to steal that money somehow; and I got to steal it some way that they wont suspicion I done it." (Twain 133) After Huck stole the money Huck and Jim didn’t feel bad at all, and knew that they did the right thing after all. He learns that not everyone can be scammed on, that the real life is important and that you can’t do anything stupid like that. He sees eye to eye with Jim and realizes that he cant have someone taken advantage of just because of their

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

When the King goes to feel out one of the towns to see if the people of that particular town has heard of the fraud of a show that he and the Duke had been putting on Huck is planning his and Jim’s escape. Huck at this point knows that the King is actually going into the town to look for more people’s houses to rob. The Duke is visibly agitated for some reason and Huck senses it. When Huck and the Duke go into the town to look for the King he is obviously drunk. Huck runs as soon as he sees an opportunity to lose the King and the Duke. Huck thinks he and Jim are finally free only to find that Jim is gone. When Huck realizes Jim is gone and he cannot find him he actually cries. We see the emotional attachment and bond that Jim has formed with Jim. When Huck comes across a young boy who tells him of how a runaway slave was caught and he learns that he was caught because the Duke and the King tricked them. Following this encounter Huck is upset. The first reason he seems upset is because he was turned in by the hands of people he thought he was helping but the most ironic reason for his anger

Once he gains freedom on the river, he is fully aware that there is no one there to enforce consequences for his actions. "One evidence of that conditioning is that Huck often seems compulsively rebellious, a fact connected with his often-noted failures of self-esteem, exaggerated loneliness, and acute depression" (Levy 388). With all Huck's free time, he tended to get bored, lonely, and possibly a little depressed. Those feelings may have urged Huck to make impulsive and reckless actions to spark some interest somewhere. In those moments of poor decisions, Huck was not in touch with his conscience very

Huck feels that Mary Jane is very nice and so he should not let the two frauds, the King and Duke, take all of their money. “I say to myself, this is a girl that i'm letting that old reptle rob her of her money”(132). Hucks believe it not right to let the two fraud take all the money from the girls and so he was deciding rather to go tell the truth to Mary and her sisters. Hucks feels bad for not saying anything and letting the King and the Duke take their money. “And when she got through, they all jest laid themselves out to make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends”(132). Huck made his mind up to get the money for the girls. Here, Twain thinks it is not right to not tell the truth and let someone go into trouble. Huck’s decision in telling Mary Jane the truth and to lie to the King and the Duke shows how Twain is saying it is not right to watch a person take advantage of someone. It showing that telling the truth is better than lying because not telling the truth can put a person in danger. Huck is thinking about whether he should tell Mary Jane because the truth because the truth is always better and safer than

His whole life has been taught that “niggers” are property and are not meant to be free but In his heart he knew helping Jim was the right thing to do, no matter what anybody else says. “both Huck and Jim are depicted as characters who are capable of learning from their own mistakes, empathizing with others, and acting on the behalf of others” (Evans). As the journey down the river continues they run into two con men. These men pretend to be the Wilks brothers in order to rob this family of all of their possessions. Huck couldn’t see them do this poor family wrong. He spends some time really contemplating telling one of the girls, Mary Jane, the truth about these liars (Twain 175). He knows inside that it is the right thing to do but he doesn’t want to put himself at risk. He plans out every little detail of how he is going to tell her and how he is going to expose these men (Twain 175-178). His actions result from his sympathy for others and his conscience and show major growth as the story continues.

Huck can’t bear to see this sight, so he goes to comfort her. She tells him that she didn’t want the slave's family to be separated, this occurrence had spoiled her moving to England. Huck blurts out that they will be seeing each other again, Mary jane wants him to explain. He realizes that he told too much information to Mary Jane, so he thinks it over. His decision is to tell Mary Jane the entire truth. So he did.