The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Completely innocent characters in fiction are often used by writers as a way of creating an ironic comment on the society in which they live, a society the innocent may not understand but which he or she can still convey to the reader by contrast, understatement, and an ironic counterpoint. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain depicts what could be called "The Education of Huck Finn" as the young man travels down the river and experiences different aspects of the society of his time. Huck is intuitive about what is right, and in the long term what he learns is to trust his intuition, his own innate sense of right and wrong. Huck Finn is the innocent who serves to illuminate the hypocrisy and corruption of society through his pragmatic nature, his willingness to accept others until they show their true co

. . .
ut providing Huck with a runaway slave as a companion meant that Twain was dragging along with him a portion of his own troubled conscience in a way that had social and personal implications (Quirk 21). Huck takes care of Jim because Jim is another human being, ignoring the differences between them because of skin color. This is a novel in which the main character does not change a great deal except as he realizes his own value and the particular importance of certain of his own character traits. Huck always compares himself to others, usually unfavorably, but in the end he sees that his choices are better than their choices: Huck's role as initiate is to change, to grow, to go forward from the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge. His successful ascent into light will bode well for a nation soon to be dramatically divided by the question of slavery (Jones 156). In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass shows the dynamics of slavery and the ways in which the master-slave relationship can be equated with the father-son relationship. This is more than merely a convenient way of representing the slave relationship, for, as Douglass shows, children grew up needing a paren
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Slave Douglass, Widow Douglas, Col Grangerford, Huck Finn, Huckleberry Finn, Jim Jim, Duke Dauphin, Huck Grangerford, Jim Completely, Douglass Twain, huckleberry finn, huck finn, meaning slavery, adventures huckleberry finn, main character, terms meaning, adventures huckleberry, education huck, huck innocent, huck comes, terms meaning slavery, education huck finn, frederick douglass,
Approximate Word count = 1458
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

More Essays on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn