The Adventures Of Huck Finn

What would you do if you knew one of your friends was in trouble? Would you save them or would you try to avoid the situation and let someone else deal with it? That is the exact problem that Huck Finn is faced with in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It is a novel about the friendship between a young boy, named Huck and a black slave, named Jim. Throughout the plot Huck and Jim form a bond which proves that color should not stand as a barrier between the friendship of two people by completing endless adventures and always sticking together. The author, Mark Twain, grew up in one of the fifteen slave states and this clearly influenced his writing in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Growing up of the banks of the Mississippi River he experienced much racism and witnessed how cruel society could truly be (Merriman) and this affected him deeply. The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, supports the theme that friendship in found in unexpected places.

Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida . At age four, his family of nine moved to the banks of the Mississippi River in Hannibal , Missouri . His family was happy there but not all of his memories of the river were particularly pleasant. Because Missouri was one of the fifteen slave states it was subject to racism and Twain grew up witnessing lynchings, mobs, racism and general inhumane treatment of African Americans. One of Twain’s most horrible memories was “the murder of a defenseless slave by a ruthless slave master and of course, the grim sight of shackled slaves was itself a near-constant along the docks of the river” (Howard). The sightings at the river were not Twain’s only experience around African American slaves though as his own father and uncle both owned slaves. “When Twain visited his uncle’s farm, he enjoyed playing in the slave quarters and listening to their tall tales and spirituals, which he kept with him throughout his life” (http://www.marktwainhouse.org/theman/bio.shtml) When Twain left the South forever, he felt that it was his duty to pay back the debt he felt ever white man owed to every black man because of all the cruelness he had seen done to them. Even though the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a sequel to the light hearted novel Tom Sawyer, it shows the darker aspects of growing up next to the Mississippi river in a slave state (Howard).