Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain's "The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn"

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel about a

young boy’s coming of age in the Missouri of the mid-1800’s. The main

character, Huckleberry Finn, spends much time in the novel floating down

the Mississippi River on a raft with a runaway slave named Jim. Before he

does so, however, Huck spends some time in the fictional town of St.

Petersburg where a number of people attempt to influence him.

Before the novel begins, Huck Finn has led a life of absolute

freedom. His drunken and often missing father has never paid much

attention to him; his mother is dead and so, when the novel begins, Huck is

not used to following any rules. The book’s opening finds Huck living with

the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. Both women are fairly old

and are really somewhat incapable of raising a rebellious boy like Huck

Finn. Nevertheless, they attempt to make Huck into what they believe will

be a better boy. Specifically, they attempt, as Huck says, to "sivilize" him.

This process includes making Huck go to school, teaching him various

religious facts, and making him act in a way that the women find socially

acceptable. Huck, who has never had to follow many rules in his life, finds

the demands the women place upon him constraining and the life with them

lonely. As a result, soon after he first moves in with them, he runs away. He

soon comes back, but, even though he becomes somewhat comfortable

with his new life as the months go by, Huck never really enjoys the life of

manners, religion, and education that the Widow and her sister impose

upon him.

Huck believes he will find some freedom with Tom Sawyer. Tom is a boy of

Huck’s age who promises Huck and other boys of the town a life of

adventure. Huck is eager to join Tom Sawyer’s Gang because he feels that

doing so will allow him to escape the somewhat boring life he leads with

the Widow Douglas. Unfortunately, such an escape does not occur. Tom

Sawyer promises much—robbing stages, murdering and ransoming

people, kidnaping beautiful women—but none of this comes to pass. Huck

finds out too late that Tom’s adventures are imaginary: that raiding a

caravan of "A-rabs" really means terrorizing young children on a Sunday

school picnic, that stolen "joolry" is nothing more than turnips or rocks.

Huck is disappointed that the adventures Tom promises are not real and

so, along with the other members, he resigns from the gang.

Another person who tries to get