Morality In Huckleberry Finn

Morality is the way an individual decides what is right and what is wrong. Morales can vary extensively from person to person; what is often right to someone is completely wrong to somebody else. Having morals vary to this extent raises questions, are we born with our morals, or do we gain them throughout our life? In Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) Twain attempts to answer this with the help of Huck and how he contrasts with the other characters. He shows us that we are not born with our morals, rather, they are influenced by society, our experiences and our surroundings. He demonstrates this by illustrating the differences between Huck and Tom, by showcasing the more narrow set of morals imposed by the religious characters and by Huck's ability

to see Jim as a person.

Huck and Tom have lived two wildly different lives, Tom grew up with a stable family life and with an education, while Huck never had this things.

As a result of how these two were raised, their morales have developed in different ways. There are multiple occasions where these different morals are illustrated, for example, when Tom decides to start a band of robbers we can see a major difference in their ideals. We see that Tom is an idealist and a leader, while Huck is a realist and more of a follower. Tom grew up with books, using his imagination to have fun, he wants to do everything the it is “in the books” (Twain 9). Huck, on the other hand, is not educated like Tom, he wants to be a part of the band to be apart of something. Huck tends follow, listening to what Tom has to say. This illustrates perfectly how Toms upbringing influenced his morales. Another example of this in the book is when the band when to steal jewels, elephants, and camels from the arabs (Twain 13). When they arrived at the location where the arabs were supposed to be, there was nothing but a Sunday school. Tom tells the

boys that all of the soldiers, jewels and elephants were being hidden by genies. Huck can not seem to wrap his head around it, he tries to force himself to see what the others see, but can not manage it. After disagreeing with each other, Tom has enough and says to him, “Shucks, it ain’t no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don’t seem to know anything, somehow-perfect saphead”(Twain 14). This quote makes evident how Tom puts his imagination above other qualities, such as logic, while Huck “don’t put stock” in imagination as much as he does realism. Both of these examples establish how, because they were raised differently, Huck and Tom’s morals both developed in different ways. If they were in fact born with their sense of moral, their morals would be much more similar.

Religion plays a heavy role in Huck’s life and journey.

He is completely surrounded by religion, it affects his everyday life. While we know he does not quite like religion, or even respect it, we know that the others around him do. These religious people tend to have a more narrow set of morals than our protagonist which can be explained by the influence put on them by the religious society they live in. A great example of these more narrow morals would be Mrs.Watson. She relies heavily on religion for her moral guidelines, but also uses it to justify what she deems right. She sees the world as black and white, the good place or the bad place. Sitting up straight would send you to the good place, while slouching or misbehaving would send you straight to the bad place (Twain 2). The pressure that society has put on her to respect religion made her form such narrow views on morality. Huck, comparatively, has not been influenced as heavily by the religious society. Part of the reason religion was mostly kept out of Huck’s life is thanks to his father, who thinks religion is bad. When Pap finds out Huck is getting educated he say, “It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son.” (Twain 20). This shows us how much Pap truly dislikes religion and how it

will never controle Huck’s life. Huck himself dislikes religion, he thinks that because they are all dead, it does not really affect him (Twain 2). As a result of the lack of religious influence in his life, Huck has a much looser moral compass than some of the other characters. Seeing how religion affect the morality of some of the characters, we can come to the conclusion that people’s morals are in fact influenced by society and it’s religion.

Most of the characters in Huck Finn see black men as less. Having this viewpoint was not uncommon for their time, as slavery was still prevalent. One exception for this is Huck, after his experiences with Jim he sees him for what he is, a human being and a friend. At the beginning of the novel Huck treats Jim like dirt, hanging his hat on the tree, for example. This changes for Huck as he got to know Jim. After playing a joke on Jim in chapter 15 Huck feels bad and says, “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.” (Twain 86). In this quote Huck is still racist, just a lot less racist than some of the other characters in the book. We can see a clear difference in this from the start; he started off not feeling apologetic to Jim when he pulls a prank, to apologetic once he got to know him. Furthermore, other characters who have not had the same experiences with Jim are much more racist. A great example of a character that grew up in this racist society and did not know any other to live is Pap. Pap thinks he is above any black man, we can see this perfectly in chapter 6:
There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awful- est old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. (Twain 27)
Pap, the uneducated drunk, believes that he has more of a right to vote than a professor, simply because he is black. Although this is extremely racist, Pap is not entirely to blame for this statement. Pap is surrounded by racism, it’s a part of his life, his sense of morality is aligned with his surroundings, so he believes his racisme to be right. While Huck was surrounded with racism too, his experiences with Jim taught him that a black man is a human being. We can see, with the help of these examples, that someone raised in a racist surrounding would end up being racist, and that experiences influence your sense of morality when it comes to racism. Huck was just as racist as the others until he went on his journey with Jim, and Pap’s racism can be justified by his racist surroundings. In the end, it proves to us how morals come from experiences and surroundings.

With the help of the differences between Huck and Tom, the narrow morals of the more religious characters, and the viewpoints on racism of different characters, Twain showed us that our morals come from experiences, society, and our surroundings. We can apply what Twain has showed us to better understand how different people will determine what is right and what is wrong. We can look at racism that happens in the south and see how these peoples morals were affected by the heavily religious and racist environment they were raised in. Although racism is still not acceptable, we can see that these people were not born like this, their morals are a product of the environment they live in.