Huck Finn Character Analysis

Huck has grown up in a small town without a father figure that could really show him the way of life. Huck is forced to learn about civilization on his own with the help of his friends. It begins with Huck's escape from his drunken, brutal father to the river, where he meets up with Jim, a runaway slave. The story of their journey downstream, with occasional forays into the society along the banks, is an American classic that captures the smells, rhythms, and sounds, the variety of dialects and the human activity of life on the great river (Rose). Huck grows up in a rural town with little knowledge. Huck and his friends learn about civilization together. I went and told the Widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying …show more content…
Instead he has a natural love and affection for all people. No matter their race, religion, or beliefs. Throughout the story you can see how Huck does not change his mind about society. Twain shows this by giving us a look at a close relationship between Huck and Jim. Twain shows Jim as kind-hearted and says “and besides, what does one say about Jim? There can be no doubt that Mark Twain wants us to admire him; he is a sympathetic, loving, self-abnegating, even saintly, "Christ-like" man. But what does one tell black children about his extreme passivity, his childlike credulity, his cloying deference toward the white boy? Aren't these the traits of a derisory racial stereotype, the fawning black male? To overcome objections on that score, one would have to stress Jim's cunning and his occasional refusal to play the minstrel darkie, especially the great episode in which he drops his habitual pose of docility, if it is a pose, and angrily denounces Huck for making him the victim of a cruel joke” (Leo). Society has changed a lot of people’s views about a lot of things, one of them being racism and slavery. “It should be added at once that Jim doesn't mind too much. The fact is that he has undergone a similar transformation. On the raft he was an individual, man enough to denounce Huck when Huck made him the victim of a practical joke. In the closing episode, however, we lose sight of Jim in the maze of farcical invention." And the last twelve chapters are boring, a sure sign that an author has lost the battle between plot and theme and is just filling in the blanks. As with all bad endings, the problem really lies at the beginning, and at the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn neither Huck nor Twain takes Jim's desire for freedom at all seriously; that is, they do not accord it the respect that a man's passion deserves. The sign of this is that not only do the two never cross the Mississippi to Illinois, a free state, but they hardly

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