Society´s Law in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

F i n a l P a p e r: L a w s v e r s u s M o r a l s

Starting at the very beginning of the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – Huck Finn says that he does not want to conform to society’s laws, yet for a long span of the novel Huck debates in his mind whether to go with what his heart tells him to do or to follow through with what society requires of him. There are some fairly distinctive pieces of evidence within the novel that support the idea that there was a conflict between Huck’s moral values and society’s laws. Huck faces many punishing situations where he has highly conflicting feelings towards his own personal morals and the laws of society where he must make decisions that have the potential to affect not only his own self conscience but also his relationship with others, specifically Jim.

Huck Finn initially wished to run away and take pleasure in a simple life, secluded from society on the river, but over an unpredictable sequence of events he finds himself helping a black man named Jim runaway from slavery in search of freedom. Huck starts his adventure care free and for a while he was entirely unaware that by helping Jim he was actually rebelling against the law. According to Gunnar’s Guide to Huck Revised by Rolf Gunnar, the laws of society at the time of Huck’s journey considered people of African descent as property and, therefore, less than human so the very moment that Huck discovered that he is breaking the law by helping Jim escape, everything changed for him completely. Huck begins to contemplate his decision to help Jim because he is breaking the law and he has great guilt for feeling as though he has betrayed Miss Watson. This is clear to us when he thinks to himself, “That was...

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...this contributes to the idea of lawlessness. Other times though, Huck did break laws because his perceptions on certain standards were different.

The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain focuses primarily on Huck’s journey to adulthood and how he slowly begins to understand certain aspects about the laws of society, but it doesn’t mean that he necessarily agreed with what society believed to be correct. Huck grew up differently and uses his dad’s knowledge as an explanation for why he steals boats and other things and why he would rob the farms and food markets. "Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easily find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t never forgot” (Twain) or “Pap always said it wasn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime” (Twain)