Values, Morals, and Ethics in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Values, Morals, and Ethics in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the values of Huck and Jim traveling down the Mississippi River are contrasted against those of the people residing in the southern United States. Twain satirically portrays organized religion and society's morals throughout the novel.

The freedom and tranquillity of the river gives way to the deceit, greed and prejudice of the towns lying on the shore of the river, causing them to disguise themselves and keep their identities hidden. These two runaways - one a slave, the other a beaten boy - attempt to build a sanctuary from civilization upon their raft, but the influence of the shore values continue to find their way into the thoughts, actions and feelings of both Huck and Jim, which becomes the major theme of this novel. While traveling down the Mississippi upon the raft, Huck and Jim's sense of freedom subordinated all others. Jim was a "runaway nigger" (Mark Twain, pg. 89) running from the law, yet he was free, while on the raft, to live and think as any white man. According to the rest of society, Huck was dead, murdered and thrown into the Mississippi; but on the raft he was alive. Both lived an idyllic life on the raft and as Huck put it, "...it's lovely to live on a raft" (Ibid., pg. 115). Later, when the Duke and Dauphin came aboard and they agreed to all be friends, Huck was relieved and felt that everybody should "...feel right and kind towards the others..." (Ibid., pg. 121) while living on a raft. Throughout their travels on the raft, honesty, kindness and equality prevailed, but whenever they touched shore, they encountered the deceit, greed, and cruelty of rural Southern United States. The idyllic life on the raft was contrasted with the hatred, cruelty, and distrust felt amongst the inhabitants of the shores of the Mississippi. Two feuding families, the Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons, are a satirized look at the lives of Southerners and of organized religion. The two families had been fighting for thirty years and no one knew the reason. When Huck asked if it was caused by land, Buck Grangerford responded "I reckon maybe - I don't know" (Ibid.