The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck has a grim attitude toward people he disagrees with or doesn't get along with. Huck tends to alienate himself from those people. He doesn't let it bother him. Unlike most people Huck doesn't try to make his point. When Huck has a certain outlook on things he keep his view. He will not change it for anyone. For instance in Chapter Three when Miss Watson tells Huck that if he prayed he would get everything he wished for. “Huck just shook his head yes and walked away telling Tom that it doesn't work because he has tried it before with fishing line and fishing hooks.” This tells us that Huck is an independent person who doesn't need to rely on

In the beginning of this Huckleberry Finn, Huck was an uncivilized and ignorant boy. When he moved in with the Widow Douglas, she "allowed she would [him]" but he did not want to stay with her because she was so "regular and decent... in all her ways" (2). He did not have what most people would consider morals. He was so against things moral and civilized that

Instead, he wanted to be free to do what he wanted; he wanted live off the land, smoke, and dress comfortably. He rejected the “dismal regular and decent” ways of the widow and believed Miss Watson to be “tolerable” (11, 12). Huck is straightforward with his thoughts: “’I don’t care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I ain’t no ways particular how it’s done so it’s done. What I want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my Sunday-school book; and if a pick’s the handiest thing, that’s the thing I’m a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school book out with’”

Huck is a free spirit who finds socially acceptable actions to be restrictive and unbearable. This is demonstrated after Huck and his best friend Tom Sawyer find a large amount of money. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck. With Widow Douglas, Huck feels as though society's values and norms

Huck is confused because he initially considered himself as the abnormal one who is trying to escape a slave.

At the start of the book, Huck has a hard time realizing the difference of right and wrong. When he and Jim are on Jackson’s Island, Huck kills a rattlesnake and puts it in Jim’s bed to scare him but that was a bad idea because the snakes mate ended up biting Jim. Huck felt terrible and decides to own up to his mistake, the mature way. “Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do” (Twain 48-49). Huck realizes that he was off beam for the prank and decides to not look the other way and own up to his actions.

The characters of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson after represented as harsh authority figures who force Huck to do things. “Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and I asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”

While Huck travels with the Duke and the King, Hucks never seems too bothered by their cons to a point where he feels as though he must step in. However, this changes when the Duke and the King are attempting to steal the family’s inheritance, as Huck says, “this is another one that I’m letting him rob her of her money… I felt so ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust”(Twain 177). Huck finds the courage within himself to “up and tell the truth this time” to Mary Jane, although he states that it would be like “setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to” (Twain 189). A sort of shift in Huck’s character occurs here, from laying back to keep everyone content to stepping forward and stopping what is clearly wrong.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain (1884) is the story of Huck’s maturation as he runs away from the suffocating environment of civilization and the societal beliefs of the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, and finds himself forced to take care of himself while helping the escaped slave Jim evade capture. The Mississippi River acts as a catalyst for Huck’s development of a mature conscience and independent mind and represents freedom for both Huck and Jim. This essay will explore and analyze the many changes that occur to the major characters Huck and Jim on their journey down the Mississippi river and the transformation of Huck Finn’s immature to mature conscience. In the novel’s beginning, Huck is characteristically

Huck learns the importance of freedom from the Widow Douglas and pap. By the time we finish reading the first page of the novel, we know that Huck does not like living with the Widow Douglas. Huck explains that the widow took him in, and how “when [he] couldn’t stand it no longer [he] lit out” (1). Huck is staying with Widow Douglas because other people want him to be there not because he wants to stay with her. Huck is being deprived of his freedom. Widow Douglas also makes Huck do things that he does not necessarily want to do. She teaches him bible stories, which Huck feels is pointless because “[he] don’t take no stock in dead people” (2), Huck is forced to go to school, which he isn’t particularly found of either because “[he] don’t take no stoke in mathematics” (15).

As a result, Huck is straightforwardly allowed to be “uncivilized” and independent. Despite being adopted by the kind Widow Douglas and received schooling and religious training that Huck had missed, he still thinks that they do not work with him. He would rather discover the world outside rather than be tied in one place, which is an aspect of self-reliance – the ability to search for himself. Even when he is taken away and hit by his Pap, he does not shout for help but wisely find the gun to shield him from his father’s stick.

From the very beginning of Huck's story, Huck without a doubt states that he did not want to conform to society; "The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me... I got into my old

He even goes so far as to say, “…I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before,” (Twain 307). This constant decision throughout the book, shows that while Huck did change a bit of his morals, it was not so much of a drastic change that he cannot be recognized anymore. While development means progress and advancement it can also mean reinforcing. By staying by his decision to not be refined, Huck shows great strength and perseverance in some of his previous morals and ideals.

Huck tries to adapt to a proper lifestyle with religion and education, but it does not feel right to him. It was almost a good thing when his father brings him to the shack. Huck expressed this when he said: “Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat on 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 pecking at you all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more.” (p.36)

Widow Douglas forces Huck into white society standards by making him wear new clothes, come when called, pray before dinner, and listen about Mosses after dinner (para. 3 and 4). Widow Douglas wants Huck to be “civilized” as she correlates being well-behaved with being able to enter heaven. She believes Huck not complying with her rules determines if Huck will being go to “the bad place” or heaven. The level of civilization and respectability is based off of religion. Because of Huck’s different beliefs and morals, Widow Douglas feels it is her responsibility to “civilize” him in order to change him into a polite, well-mannered individual. Freedom to Huck can be defined as liberation from the corrupt white society represented by Miss Watson's Home as illustrated in Mark Twain’s satirical novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Widow Douglas chooses to “civilize” Huck in which he responds by getting into his old clothing that makes him feel “free and satisfied” (para. 2). Huck views society standards as idiotic and senseless. He prefers defying society because of the freedom he gets to express his individuality. To Huck, his freedom is the equivalence to his happiness. When Huck is describing the woods, he personifies it to be someone who understands his and accepts him for who he really is (para. 8). Huck feels the most free when he is in the woods which is the antithesis of civilization and