Huckleberry Finn Essay

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Michael Rossi
August 12, 2009
Advanced Placement Language and Composition
Huckleberry Finn essay prompt two: How is Huck’s journey down the river a journey to a greater human understanding? How is Huck enabled to live outside of the confines of society, and in doing so, disinherit the bigotry that enveloped the south?

Intricacy at its Simplest

When an individual is raised within a society he inherits that society’s beliefs, values, and practices. Huck’s interesting condition of being taken from society and placed back into it allows him to issue pure judgment on society and its laws without any influence. Huck is able to witness and partake in the lives of others and partake in them while having the ability to move on to a new adventure any time he chooses. Huck escapes a handful of sticky situations by assimilating to multiple stereotypes. He is able to use this ability as magic and slip from society grasp continue his adventures. Throughout the novel, Huck attains a greater human understanding, is enabled to live outside the confines of society, and disinherits the bigotry of the south.
Huck gains a greater human understanding of relationships as the text progresses. Throughout Huck’s existence, he fluctuates between two extreme domestic environments. Huck’s father was an oppressive alcoholic who tried to force Huck to become like him and the widow imposed her strict Christian values and southern traditions upon Huck: “The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal and regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out” (9). When Huck was not with the widow, he lived with his father who only offered human interaction at its simplest form: submit or be forced to submit. Huck was a growing boy and his father’s lifestyle offered very little growing room, so it became natural that Huck broke his father’s hold on him. The next level of
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Huck’s human understanding that Huck achieved was being convinced to submit (not forced). Huck obeyed his father out of fear. Tom Sawyer, on the other hand was held in Huck’s highest regard. Huck obeyed Tom because Huck’s relationship with Tom has always been working under and trusting Tom: “Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable” (9). Huck associated Tom with freedom and latched onto him like an iron clasp. Huck would include the fact that Tom would be able to complete the given task with the same efficiency and a greater style. It was only towards the end of the novel when Huck was able to achieve the courage to question those who he had become accustomed to obeying. Huck had an advanced level of human understanding. He taught himself to question authority. He was able to question and disobey the orders of his father and the widow. Huck challenged Tom Sawyer’s motives to place animals in Jim’s cell and the practicality of Tom’s plan. Previously Huck would have accepted his inadequacy.
Huck’s resourcefulness and worldly knowledge allows him to evade society’s grasp and enter society only when Huck deems it to be necessary. Huck’s raft is the physical sanctuary where Huck can escape from society: “ We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft” (128). Aside from running and hiding from society Huck was able to move freely in society while letting trouble slide off him like melted butter. Huck’s age and
intelligence are greatly masked by his poor grammar and youth. His incredible wit allows him to flee his father’s house and create a likely scenario that would explain his disappearance. Huck’s youthful and ignorant exterior was his fail safe method of shedding suspicion. He is able to
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portray himself differently depending upon how he wishes to be viewed. Tom Sawyer knew how to convince Huck of anything. Huck always presented himself as a brain dead lackey who was stupefied by Tom’s every move. In actuality Huck internally questioned the efficiency of Tom’s plan. Tom also relied on multiple stereotypes to provide excuses in his favor. After Huck and Tom attempted to free Jim the adults learned of their plan and commented on its intricacy. Huck explained the failure to Aunt Sally and she forgave them on the account that they were simply boys who sought adventure, ignorant of their boundaries and hazards. Huck commented on Aunt Sally’s leniency and attributed the cause to his gender: “and then she said she’d forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot, as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn’t come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive” (296). In this quote Huck added the phrase, as far as she could see, which reveals that Aunt Sally could not distinguish Huck’s actual intentions. Aunt Sally simply regarded Huck’s mishap as a game, not as a stance against society and it’s values. Huck wanted to liberate Jim and to give him freedom, not to play hero or simulate a jail break. Huck challenges society while relying on society for protection.
Escaping society’s demands and punishments allows Huck to develop his own beliefs and disinherit the bigotry of the south. He makes an astounding growth away from the
prejudice that the widow taught to him. When Huck and Jim escaped on the raft Huck was deeply vexed by the guilt of contributing to the freedom of an African American. He realizes he did not directly steal and liberate Jim from his owner, however he feels the guilt the one would
feel if he went on vacation and found that his neighbor’s pet cat slipped to into his luggage and he continued on vacation without bothering to notify the neighbors. It’s the sort of guilt that isn’t
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serious enough to control your actions unless one ponders over it for extensive periods of time. Huck was aided in distracting himself from guilt by getting to know Jim as time passes. Huck feels torn between turning Jim in because he believes it is the right thing to do, when it is society telling him what to do. On the other hand, Huck believes delivering Jim to his freedom originated from a self serving motivation while in reality he is following Christianity. Without a modern Christian education, Huck is forced to make the decision that his nagging conscience and Christianity are one and the same. Huck believes that choosing Jim’s freedom means heading straight for hell. The sheer intensity of Huck’s decision is best represented in the following quote: “I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’ (228). Accepting the worst fate know to man is a bold step against the southern racial repression and because it shows how it is wrong through the eyes of a child. Huck simply believes he has agreed to burn in hell in order to save his friend which he eventually learns is just as humane as he is and whose life truly is worth saving.
Throughout the novel Huck attains a greater human understanding, is enabled to live outside the confines of society, and is able to disinherit the bigotry of the south. Huck relies on
the stereotypes that he fits to endure the main brunt of the blame that would reveal a grown man to be a criminal. Huck is able to cast blame away from him and escape from society with the expertise of a magician. He does not fully understand the complex forms of his speech structure that emphasizes his apparent inability to comprehend the main point of conversations and ignorance of the world around him: “And when it was late in the day, the people all went then I come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and ‘Sid,’ and the door was locked,
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and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn’t never want to try that no more” (295-296). Huck’s emphasis of his remorse of grappling the pole is a small but significant statement that demonstrates that he doesn’t appear to understand what is truly being asked of him. Huck’s skilled and manipulative speech masks his true intellect to others and quells their suspicion even though Huck is not conscious of him doing so (he does it instinctively). That is the thing about magic. A great magician never reveals his secrets, in Huck’s case, not even to himself.