Huck Finn Character Analysis

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the protagonist, Huck Finn, witnesses the flawed society of 1883. Huck meets Jim, an african-american slave, and they run away together to escape Huck’s abusive father and haunting past. Huck’s morals tend to be whatever is easiest for him, and how he could get around doing hard tasks. Huck may seem as though he is fixed on his own ideas but as the reader goes through Huck’s adventure they learn that his morals change. Although, at the beginning of the novel Huck’s morals tend to be self-centered, ultimately his morals have changed because he puts JIm before himself and realizes the wrongdoing of others.

Once Huck realizes this, he begins to write a letter to Jim’s slave owner, Miss Watson, telling her where Jim is located. Due to his upbringing, he believes that telling Miss Watson is the right thing to do. Instead Huck says “I’ll go to hell” and decides to do what he believes is right, going against society once again. Huck then goes to the Phelps’ farm and frees his friend Jim once more.

“I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit...she said she warn’t ashamed of me.” Chap 4, pg 15

Throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, certain characters help influence the development of Huck’s morality immensely. For instance, Jim gave Huck a sense of loyalty and respect, Meanwhile Huck’s father and the con men Huck encountered allowed him to see how not to treat others and what not to value. With all these influences weighing on Huck, he was able to progressively learn how to choose between the rights and wrongs amongst the decisions made by himself and others around him. Huck’s moral development as a character is mostly credited to himself in learning how to analyze situations and people in his life and deciding whether or not they keep strong values and morality.

Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a coming of age story that focuses on Huck’s development of a personal sense of morality. In the course of his adventures, Huck experiences the ugliness of society: bigotry, corruption, and hypocrisy. Huck determines for himself that what is often considered acceptable and estimable by society is morally reprehensible.

When Huck found an island to stay on that was along the river that he would be traveling, he met Miss Watson’s runaway slave, Jim. At first, Huck was hesitant because he had been taught his whole life that slavery was a normal, and acceptable, phenomenon. However, Huck felt that he owed it to Jim to help him get to freedom. This is one of the first examples of Huck becoming a favorable and moral person. Huck and Jim had this conversation that showed Huck’s moral development early in the story. “But mind, you said you wouldn’t tell- you know you said you wouldn’t tell, Huck’ ‘Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest injun, I will. People would call me a low-down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum- but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t a-going back there, anyways” (Twain 51). Here it is proven how even though Huck was taught that slavery was acceptable, he knew that he should save Jim because it was the morally appropriate thing to

Adding to the use of the N-word, scholars also argue that Jim as a slave is negatively depicted in Huck Finn. Some experts believe that Jim’s characterization is not one of equal to that if the white characters. Blacks are portrayed as less intelligent and even inhuman (Wallace 21). Even the basic skills that all humans should have, Lester feels blacks in the novel lack. Jim in particular does not have the ability to really think on his own (Lester 201-202). Many critics suggest that Jim is the typical minstrel character. From his distinctive speech to his loyalty to whites, Jim shows his slave like mentality (Nichols 212). Other critics also agree that Jim only helps out whites around him out of obligation. Lester feels that Jim acts in this manner because that is what whites expect of

It is evident that Huck’s morals are beginning to expand from what they were in his small town foster home, and he now has to make decisions which involve serious moral analysis. As the story progresses, it is clear that Jim becomes more and more important to Huck even though Huck spends a lot of time on land with people who own slaves or use Jim as a way to make money and get out of difficult situations. Through the various encounters with civilized, immoral people, Huck is able to develop his own moral code and figure out what makes the most sense to him and what feels right in his experience with Jim, who has been nothing but good to

A difficult moral situation is presented to Huck that has no option which completely satisfies his conscience after he discovers the Phelps farm purchased Jim. Huck is afraid of the social repercussions he might face for his previous actions with Jim if he notifies Ms. Watson about Jim’s location. On the other hand, Huck has pity for Jim if he were to be detached from Huck. Huck disregards the social consequences he may face and attempts to reunite with Jim anyway. His decision goes against the way he was nurtured as a boy, showing an ability to think individually even if his opinion is unpopular. Huck’s decision to help Jim is courageous because it opposes the racially discriminatory qualities and unethical morals Huck developed as a

Huck is about to write a letter to Miss Watson saying that Jim is captured and she can come pick him up but instead Huck says, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and [I] tore [my note to Miss Watson] up”(214). At this point Huck still thinks that helping Jim is wrong according to society’s rules, but he does not care. He says that he would rather go to ‘hell’ than see his friend go back into slavery. This is very powerful because it shows that Huck thinks the society he lives in is worse than hell because of the way blacks are treated. Furthermore Huck goes out of his way to help free Jim from his captors. Huck tells Tom, “There’s one more thing - a thing that nobody don’t know but me. And that is, there’s a nigger that I’m a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is Jim - old Miss Watson’s Jim”(225). Huck risks his life and reputation to save Jim, which is something that Huck would not even think of doing in the beginning of the novel but now Huck’s morals about slavery and black people have changed and he sees Jim as his

Huck begins to think about how ashamed he would be if everyone in St. Petersburg knew that he had helped a slave escape and then even continued living with him after that. He believes he has done awful things and therefore, sinned- he would be lying to himself and to God if he tried to pray while what he had done was still on his mind. Huck finally writes the letter to Miss Watson about Jim, and feels as if he is free of his sins now (Twain 213). He is no longer going against the religion and morals that he had grown up with. But as Huck begins thinking, he finally realizes that everything he has grown up with only contradict what he has learned himself.

Even from the beginning, it was evident that Tom is living in a sort of fantasy world. He had Huck join his band of "robbers", inspired by novels he had read. Anything Huck tries to do is only made more difficult to accomplish by Tom. This characteristic of Tom is brought out again in the last section of the novel. While Huck changes completely by the last few pages, Tom does not. He still does not have much common sense- his game puts Huck and Jim at risk of injury or even death. He makes everything more difficult for them and is only getting them into more and more trouble. Though Tom did not seem to mean much by it, he puts Huck and Jim in danger often. He stubbornly refuses to simply set Jim free rather than dragging them both through his

Inexperienced, immature, and attitude are some of the adjectives that you should use to describe a normal thirteen year old. In the story The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the main character Huck finn is just the opposite of the descriptions. He is an intelligent and crafty thirteen year old that learns adult skills at a very young age. Since he is a thirteen year old white boy in the 1850’s he makes the position of main character so much more interesting because of his youth, cleverness and maturity.

In the novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck is considered a moral person in an immoral society because he was raised in a different way than all the other people he encounters. Unlike the other people that were born and raised with certain biased opinions, Huck had to make his own moral compass because he doesn’t trust other people’s judgment because most of the time they’ve let him down many times. There are several times in the book where Huck’s good morality is shown, one of them is that as he continues his journey with Jim, they develop a bond. This bond becomes so strong that he begins to listen to his own conscience and see Jim as an equal to himself, there is even a point in the story when Huck would rather “go to hell” for saving Jim, even though at first they were “awful thoughts and awful words” he knew he’d “let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming” (207).

In the beginning in the movie,he was fighting a boy ,when he saw a footprint of his father. Later he went to Jim place to talk about his father if anything bad is going to happen with him. Later he sneaks out of the house to play with his friends when he saw Pap in the house and took him. Pap took him to his DWELLING then later he was chasing Huck with a knife when he got tired and went to