Adventures Of Huck Finn

Adventures Of Huck Finn
Huckleberry Finn has the great advantage of being written in autobiographical
form. Every scene in the book is given, not described, and the result is a vivid
picture of Western life in the past. Before the novel begins, Huck Finn has led
a life of absolute freedom. His alcoholic father was often missing and never
paid much attention to him. Since Huck’s mother is dead he is not used to
following any rules. In the beginning, Huck is living with the Widow Douglas and
her sister, Miss Watson. Both women are fairly old and have no patience to raise
a rebellious boy like Huck Finn. They try to make an attempt to make Huck into
what they believe will be a better boy. Huck never really enjoys the life of
manners, religion, and education that the Widow and her sister impose upon him.

Huck decides to try and find freedom with his friend Tom Sawyer. A boy of

Huck’s age, Tom, promises Huck and other boys of the town a life of adventure.

Huck really wants to join Tom’s Gang because he feels that if he does join he
will escape the boring life he leads with the Widow Douglas. Tom Sawyer promises
many things, but unfortunately, such thing did not occur. Tom’s adventures
turned out imaginary. Huck is disappointed that the adventures Tom promises are
not real, so along with the other members, he resigned from the gang. Another
person who tries to get Huckleberry Finn to change is Huck’s father. His
father is very antisocial and wishes to do all of the civilizing effects that

Widow and Miss Watson have attempted to change in Huck. Pap is a mess: his hair
is uncut and hangs like vines in front of his face, he is unshaven, and his skin
is very pale. Pap’s looks reflects Huck’s feelings as he demands that Huck
quits school, stops reading, and avoids church. Huck managed to stay away from
his father for a while, but Pap kidnaps him three or four months after Huck
starts to live with the Widow and takes him to a lonely cabin deep in the

Missouri woods. Once again, Huck enjoys the freedom that he had in the beginning
of the book. Huck soon realizes that he will have to escape from the cabin if he
wishes to remain alive. As a result, Huck makes it appear as if he was killed in
the cabin while Pap was away. He leaves to go to a remote island in the

Mississippi River, Jackson’s Island. After, he leaves his father’s cabin

Huck meets Miss Watson’s slave, Jim. Huck found Jim on Jackson’s Island
because the slave ran away because he overheard a conversation that he will soon
be sold to New Orleans. Huck begins to realize that Jim has more talents and

Intelligence than Huck. They begin to get to know eachother as they float on a
raft down the Mississippi River. Huck begins to enjoy being with Jim and starts
to care for him. In conclusion of chapter 11, Huck and Jim are forced to leave

Jackson’s Island because Huck discovers they are looking for a runaway slave.

They have a friendship that is unseperable as hey keep drifting down the river
as the novel continues. At the end of their journey, neither having anything
left to run from as Huck’s father was dead and Jim was a free man. IT would
seem, then that Huck and Jim had run at thousand miles down the river and ended
up where they had started from. Mark Twain is saying a lot of things in the
story. First, the book stands by firmly saying slavery is bad mostly because it
is hypocritical. It is well supported considering Huck is able to interact with

Jim as a human being, while the southern slave society treats Jim as an object.

Furthermore, the southerner representations are pale in comparison to Huck’s
wits and intelligence. For example, when the slave catchers who are tricked into
thinking Jim is Huck’s small pox riddled father, and the whole feud thing does
not show much in the line of smarts for southern slave owners. On a superficial
level Huckleberry Finn might appear to be racist. The first time you read the
description of Jim it is a very negative description. Although Huck is not a
racist child, he has been raised by extremely racist individuals who have
ingrained some feelings of bigotry into his mind. In chapter six, Hucks father
fervently objects to the governments granting of suffrage to an educated black
professor. Twain wants the reader to see the absurdity in this statement.

Huck’s father believes that he is superior to this black professor simply
because of the color of his skin. When Huck first meets Jim, he makes a enormous
decision, not to turn Jim in. Many times throughout the novel Huck comes very
close to rationalizing Jim’s slavery. However, he is never able to see a
reason why this man who has become on of his only friends, should be a slave.

Through this struggle, Twain expresses his opinions of the absurdity of slavery
and the importance of following one’s personal conscience before the laws of
society. In my opinion, Mark Twain is using race as a single element in his
entire picture of the hypocrisy in his society. He isn’t showing that the
whole race issue as much as he is showing the society he lives in. He uses race
to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the rich and the middle class, among other
things. What other way does he show this then by demonstrating the facets of a
society of snobby landowners then by showing the vulgarity of their vocabulary.

The dialects of the people, white and black, what a study they are; and yet
nobody talks for the sake of exhibiting a dialect. For instance, when they say

"Niger." If Mark Twain is saying anything about race, he is making an
allegorical statement complaining that the civil war did not end slavery. Also,
that living conditions are still undesirable for most blacks. For example, when

Jim was free for over two weeks, he suffered mostly when he had his freedom.

Huck has an struggle with is conscience in regard to slavery. His conscience
tells him to help the runaway to escape and to aid in stealing the property of

Miss Watson, who has never injured him. It is an enormous offense that will
definitely carry him to the bad place; but his feelings for Jim finally induces
him to violate his conscience and risk eternal punishment in helping Jim to
escape. The whole study of Huck’s moral nature is as serious as it is amusing.

His confusion of wrong as right and his abnormal mendacity, could be followed to
his training from birth, is a singular contribution to the investigation of
human nature. Mark Twains next statement about society is Religion. The
hypocrisy of religion comes when Miss Watson, because of her religion, treats
blacks as objects even though the bible says that people should be treated
equally. He also puts a scene in at the church, where the Shepard sons and

Grangerfords have gathered to hear a sermon about brotherly love. Well at the
sermon both families have guns in their hands and kill eachother after the
service is through. Both the King and the Duke showed a ridiculous degree of
corruptness that it is difficult to believe that all humans aren’t at least
somewhat evil. Another point made by the author is when Col. Sherbun shot the
drunk Boggs and the townsfolk came after Sherbun to murder him. After Sherbun,
one man with only a shotgun, held off the immense mob and made them disperse, it
was obvious that no individual really had the courage to go through the murder.

The idea that people are basically savages, confined for the moment by society,
is shown in more than one instance, such as when the war between the

Shephardsons and the Grangerfords. The aspect of people being basically
hypocrites is seen at the beginning when Miss Watson displays a degree of
hypocritically on insisting that Huck follow the Widow and become civilized,
while at the same time deciding to sell Jim into a hard life down the river,. A
final point seems to be that Man is continually fleeing from something. Mark

Twain put a main character who rejects religion, yet Huck, for the most part,
has the clearest view of society. Their journey down the river sets the stage
for most of Mark Twain’s comments about man and society. It is when they stop
off at various towns along the river that various human character flaws always
seem to come out. For example, the happenings that occurred after the bringing
on of the Duke and the King. These two con artists would execute the most
foolish of schemes to relieve unsuspecting townspeople of their cash. The fact
that, after being taken by a poor show they sent rave reviews of it to their
friends to avoid admitting they had been conned showed that people in groups are
afraid of losing position, and will do nearly anything to protect such.

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot." That quote proves that there is neither a
motive, moral, nor a plot. You have to put the pieces to the puzzle by your own
thoughts. The warning in the book is that persons attempting to seek a moral in
the story should be banished. Mark Twain turns his knowledge of Western dialects
to account. He knows that children will not read a dull book. He never makes a
dull one. In my opinion, I think that he made the story to make people confused.

He didn’t want anyone to know a moral to the story. Maybe he even thought his
book would sell more by writing that quote. Authors have many ideas in their
minds and they have many ways to confuse you and make you curious. When it came
to a point to figure out the moral, it made you more confused than anything.

There were so many things. For example, religion, racism, abuse, and many other
things. There is very little of literary art in the story.

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