Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a novel that speaks to the truth of American society in the 19th century. Through the adventures of a white pubescent boy and a runaway slave Mark Twain manages to illustrate and satirize human behavior and values for that time period. However, while Twain uses this novel to make bold statements about humanity in the negative sense there are the less brash more subtle tones that are just as brilliant and special to the novel.
Huckleberry Finn, a cocky and spunky southerner, and Jim, a lovable runaway slave develop a symbiotic relationship that speaks volumes about the basic human need for love and affection. Although Twain has created two characters that are different in age, color, and status, Huck and Jims lives become intertwined as they ride down the Mississippi River. Their problems and desires merge into one and the differences that were once so prominent and almost blinding melt and join together and it is impossible to pinpoint where one life begins and the other ends.
This merging is seen through the similarities in what both Huck and Jim are running from and more importantly running to. Both go through a similar transition through out the course of the book; running from their situations, searching for their destiny, and ultimately finding freedom. From the beginning of the book it is apparent that both Jim and Huck come from extremely hard lives where society dictates their lives. Huck appears to be harassed by an overbearing aunt and an abusive father.
He is forced to either conform to a model Puritan lifestyle of proper dress, speech and schooling or his father kidnaps him and exposes him to the life of a scoundrel. Jim has other issues with which to contend. He is a slave at risk of being sold down the River and being torn from his wife and children. Like Huck, Jim also must face the pressures and mentality of society. He has to cope with the ideals and roles that people have placed him in solely based on his color. From their two separate stories it is evident that both seem to lack respect or acceptance from those that dictate right and wrong, proper and improper, in society.
And for this reason they both want to run away. In Hucks situation he is running from many different aspects of his life, his father being one of the most significant. When he first describes his father, Huck draws the pictures of this gross, disgusting man, using words like, tangled, greasy, hung down, white to make a body sick, white to make a bodys flesh crawl (pg. 19) What is interesting about Hucks description is the lack of emotion behind the words, there is no emotional energy attached.
Huck decides to run away masking his escape as an adventure, a game when in reality it is a way to flee his father that abuses him and his guardians who dont understand him. When Huck finally does run away from his father he creates an elaborate death scene to fool the whole town. And as he hid on Jacksons Island, he was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders . . . (pg. 37) This statement clearly exemplifies how beneath the surface he likes feeling that people care about him and are concerned for him. While Jims situation is different from Hucks there are many similarities.
Jims reasoning for running off is due to Miss Watson, his master, she awluz said she wouldn sell me down to Orleans. But I notices dy wuz a nigger trader rounde place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy. (pg. 43) When Jim describes why he is running away he tells his story very fact for fact and doesnt mention the underlying issues of why he is running away, which is freedom, which is what Huck is running for too. Both want acceptance from society yet they dont acknowledge those emotions in the beginning. They are running yet they have not admitted what they are running to at this point in the novel.
While Jim and Huck sail away on their raft down the Mississippi River they encounter different situations which in many ways test what they are searching for, who they want to be when they reach where ever they are going. Twain introduces two low life characters and uses them to allow Huck to see what his future could be like. The King and the Duke are in reality two lying thieves that pretend to be famous aristocrats and insist that one is a King and the other is a Duke. They act as a mirror for Huck to look into the future and see what kind of life he could have.
Not only is it scary for Huck but it is also a realization to how these adults turn out. He comes to this realization while the King and the Duke are performing a scam on two young women who were mourning their fathers death. The King and the Duke went into the town pretending as if they were in fact the brothers of the deceased and therefore were rightful recipients of the inheritance. In the middle of the scam it occurs to Huck that this was wrong and deceitful, I says to myself, this is a girl that Im letting that old reptile rob her of her money! (pg. 9) In the beginning of the novel Huck would play games of robbers and bandits with his friends but there is a change that takes place within him on the river that makes him re-evaluate his life and what really is the right and wrong thing to do. While Jim is running away from his life he encounters what he is looking for much like Huck does.
But it is not until one quiet night on the raft that the reader hears about Jims realization. For the first time in the novel Jim is described as, thinking of his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadnt been away from home before in his life . . (pg. 50) Jim is realizing like Huck that he doesnt want to have to be ashamed to have a loving warm family, he wants that and he is entitled to it like any other. The way that both Jim and Huck both seem to ground themselves a little more in what they want as humans only adds to their connection to one another and their development as individuals. By the end of the novel there is a sense that the journey Huck and Jim have taken together has come to a common closing, or perhaps more appropriately a common beginning.
Jim is captured by slave hunters and Huck decides to find Jim and set him free, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery . . . (pg. 206) Through a series of encounters Huck learns that Jim is on a farm waiting to be reclaimed by his rightful owner. However the plot thickens when Huck goes to the farm only to be greeted and welcomed into the house under the misconception of the farmer and his wife that Huck is in fact Tom Sawyer, the farmers nephew. Despite the confusion and lying that takes place near the end of the novel Jim and Huck still manage to find a sense of freedom and expectance that was not apparent in the rest of the book.
As the end of the novel draws near the Farmers wife, Tom Sawyers Aunt Polly, brings it to every ones attention that, Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting Jim free in her will; and so sure enough, Tome Sawyer has gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free. (pg. 279) But what Aunt Polly was not aware of was that the Tom Sawyer she was talking about was non only then Huckleberry Finn and not the nephew she has thought he was. It is important to realize that because in many ways Jim was not free until after his adventures with Huck.
Jim needed that affection and tenderness that he received from Huck and was only free until after that, so in actuality Jim was not really free until Huck freed him. There were many occasions when Huck came back for Jim. He returned to Jim after his stay with the Grangerfords, a wealthy family that took Huck in after Jim and Huck were separated on the Mississippi, I was glad to get away from the feuds with Jim (pg 113) Huck also went back for Jim after the King and the Duke tried to pull their scam as the brothers who were the rightful recipients of the inheritance.
And then finally Huck went back to free Jim one last finally time. It was not the actual acts of freeing that Jim needed but the concept of expectance and that is what allowed Jim to be truly liberated from his past life at the end of the novel. Hucks liberation at the end of the book was very similar to Jims. Aunt Polly, the woman who had been watching Huck all this time while he was trying to free Jim in secret, grew to love Huck and give him something that his father, foster guardians, or friends never could give him.
But it was not merely the expectance by Aunt Polly that allowed him to be loved and vulnerable. It was the respect that he received from Aunt Polly, and like Jim, it was the respect that Huck earned more then anything else. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is filled with exciting journeys but beneath all of those adventures is the story of a young boy and a black slave. When they first run into each other their lives are separate and seem to be going in different direction.
However both Jim and Huck learn that they are really searching for similar things in life and by the end of the novel they find them in similar places. Perhaps through this intertwined relationship Twain is saying something greater about human nature and the course that almost all individuals take in life. The path that leads them to finds expectance, affection, respect, and freedom. Think that Huckleberry Finn is an extremely complex character. I dont know if there are words that I can chose that would sum him up or describe who he is as a person.
I dont see how Huckleberry Finn could not be messed up. I mean with everything that happened with his father. That would seriously screw up a kid. Unless I am thinking too much in modern times and everyone had parents like that. But that really could not be because Mark Twain brings up other readers in the book like the Gragerfords, Sheperds, and the kids with the dead father, and the Aunt and uncle of Tom, and they are not really like Hucks Dad. It is so weird to me that Huck could appear so emotionless.
On page 22 he talks a good deal about how the Judge had to get a restraining order on his father and he never adds a tone of feeling in his speech. But it most be there or else I dont think he would have run away. I dont think he is like Tom Sawyer in that he needs adventure. I think he needed out of that House. I think that Huck is more complex then Tom and didnt see his life as a game anymore and went as far as to fake his own death. The adventures are all a cover up for what is really going on inside Huck. He also says on pg. 37 so I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders . I think in many ways Huck is starved for love and that is why he likes that people are looking for him, the same way he was tempted to stay at the Gragerfords house, the same way he became Tom Sawyer at his aunt and uncles house, the same way he attached onto Jim. He is starved for affection. And I believe that is why Huck doesnt turn Jim in. Huck grew up in a racist society with racist ideals and there is no way, I believe, Huck would not turn Jim in if he didnt feel he was getting something from Jim he never had gotten before.
Even his best friend Tom never loved Huck the way Jim did, never gave him words of affection the way Jim did. Tom was always saying things to Huck like, I should hope you would do better then that pg. 225, Huck, you dont ever seem to want to do anything thats regular pg. 231, He never would encourage Huck and was always putting him down, especially in the beginning of the book with the robbers and then in the end of the book when they were trying to set Jim free. But Jim, Jim would say the nicest things to Huck, things a person needs to hear, loving words.
Jim says, is dat you, honey? . . . bless you, chile, I uz right down shoyous dead again. . . Is might glad to git you back again honey. pg 112-113. And Jim would take care of him like a child needs to be cared for. For example on the boat one of them would always keep watch and many night, Jim didnt call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there And at one point in the book, I am not sure where, Jim calls Huck his best friend, or only friend.
That is so important for Huck as a growing kid, he needs love and that is why I think he makes the choice to save Jim, not because he has a new found respect for Black people or has lost his racist or stereotypical mentality towards black people but I think he loves Jim and for the first time acts on that love. And it is not a lie it is real. Huck lies a lot which is also part of his character. When you lie enough you begin to forget what is real and not real and I think Huck could not let Jim go by because it was something real for the first time in his life.
That is why when Tom comes to help save Jim he takes it so much more seriously. And that would also explain why Huck, still to the very end thinks that he is doing something wrong by setting Jim free. He very clearly states that he thinks it is low down and dirty. So he is still racist to a certain degree but the love he has for Jim is overpowering that racist mentality. Huck could not bear to hurt some one who for the first time loved him. But maybe he wanted to hurt Jim and that was why he kept his racist views. Maybe he couldnt get close to Jim, maybe it scared him.
Maybe that was his way of keeping a safe distance between himself and Jim. I dont really know the answer to that. It is the kind of thing that if I ever re-read the book I would look for more closely in Hucks character because I think it is crucial in his character. I dont think I can understand Hucks character without carefully looking at the racism that he still have till the end and his love for Jim as a person and not a slave. Maybe through Huck Mark Twain is making a bigger statement about the human race. Like maybe we all can learn to love each other but there will always be preconceived ideas that can not be erased.