an analysis of the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain

1. Shilpi Kanchan
B.A. (Hons) English
VI Semester

2. • “All modern American literature comes
from one book by Mark Twain called
Huckleberry Finn”, Ernest Hemingway
wrote in 1935.
• Huckleberry Finn is a novel which has
elements to engage any age group.
• He has used living colloquial speech of his
day and has used seven dialects in this
novel, according to David Carkeet.
• His longtime friend John T. Lewis is the
inspiration of the character of Jim.
Mark Twain &
Huckleberry Finn
(1835-1910)

4. PLOT
Mark Twain blends many comic elements into the
story of Huck Finn, a boy about 13 years old, living in pre-Civil
War Missouri. Huck, the novel’s narrator, has been living with the
Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, in the town of St.
Petersburg. They have been trying to “sivilize” him with proper
dress, manners, and religious piety. He finds this life constraining
and false and would rather live free and wild.
When his father hears that Huck has come into a
large amount of money, he kidnaps him and locks him in an old
cabin across the river. To avoid his father’s cruel beatings, Huck
elaborately stages his own murder and then escapes to Jackson’s
Island.

5. He finds Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave, on the
island, and the two decide to hide out together. To avoid danger of
discovery, they decide to float down the river on a raft they had
found earlier.
Sleeping during the day and traveling at night, they
plan to connect with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois, which would
lead them north into the free states, where slavery is repealed.
They miss Cairo in the fog one night and find themselves
floating deeper into slave territory. While they are searching for
a canoe, a steamship hits the raft and damages it.
Huck and Jim are separated. Huck swims ashore
where he meets the feuding Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. He
claims to be George Jackson, a passenger who fell from a
steamboat and swam to shore.

6. After witnessing a violent eruption of the feud in
which many people are killed, he finds Jim, and they return to
the raft. They continue down the river.
Two conmen, calling themselves a king and a
duke, find their way to the raft. In one of the towns the king
and the duke impersonate the two brothers of Peter Wilks, who
has just died and left a small fortune. Huck thwarts their plan to
swindle Wilks’ family out of their inheritance.
The king and the duke escape, but further down
the river the two decide to sell Jim to Silas Phelps, who turns
out to be Tom Sawyer’s uncle.

7. The Phelps mistake Huck as Tom and Tom as Sid,
Tom’s younger brother. Tom persuades Huck to join him in an
elaborate, ridiculous plan to free Jim.
Huck prefers a quicker escape for Jim but gaves in
to Tom’s wishes. Only after Tom’s plan has been played out,
and Jim recaptured, does Tom reveal that Miss Watson had
actually freed Jim two months earlier, just before she died.
Huck gets to know through Jim that his father is dead now and
he is not affected by this fact. Then, Huck decides to “light out
for the Territory,” before anyone else can attempt to “sivilize”
him again.

8. Themes
• Racism and Slavery
• The Hypocrisy of “Civilized Society”
• Maturation and Development
• Mockery of Religion
• Human Relationships

9. Racism & Slavery
• Although written 20 years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
America – especially the South – was still struggling with racism
and the aftereffects of slavery.
• Twain exposes the hypocrisy of slavery and demonstrates how
racism distorts the oppressors as much as the oppressed.
• The result is a world of moral confusion. “Twain exposed the
lunacy and hypocrisy of American racism by showing it through
the eyes of a boy who finds himself . . . helping a slave to escape.”
• Twain’s depiction of slavery is an allegorical representation of
the condition of blacks in the United States even after the
abolition of slavery.

10. • Jim ran away because he was being sold in the South at
800 $.
• Jim cares for and protects of Huck, not as a servant, but as
a friend. Thus, Twain's encourages the reader to feel
sympathy and empathy for Jim and outrage at the society
that has enslaved him and threatened his life.
• Jim let his freedom go, when he saw that Tom’s life is in
danger. He was the one who looked after Huck during the
entire journey.
• Even at the end, the doctor who was compassionate for
Jim, said that he should be worth a 1000 $. The life of a
human being is equated with money.

11. Important Phrases
• People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for
keeping mum- but that don’t make no difference.
• He had an uncommon level head for a nigger.
• I begun to get it through my head that he was most free- and who
was to blame for it ?
• Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.
• “I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s
ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.” says Jim.
• De on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.

12. The Hypocrisy of “Sivilized” Society
• Degraded rules that defy logic like those of Grangerfords
• Huck’s drunkard, abusive father gets to keep custody of Huck
because he is his natural father
• The injustice of slavery that keeps Jim away from his family
• Seemingly good people are prejudiced slave owners like Miss
Watson and Aunt Sally
• Twain seems to suggest that the uncivilized way of life is more
desirable and morally superior. Drawing on the ideas of Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, Twain suggests that civilization corrupts,
rather than improves, human beings.

13. Maturation & Development
• Huck is an uneducated boy. Widow Douglas has adopted him
in order to sivilize him.
• He distrusts the morals and precepts of the society that treats
him as an outcast and fails to protect him from abuse.
• Huck questions his teachings, especially regarding race and
slavery.
• He develops a conscience and truly feels for humanity. Huck
confronts the ethics he has learned from society that tell
• Earlier Huck believed that Jim is only property of Miss
Watson and can’t take his own decisions. By this moral code,
his act of helping Jim to escape is a sin.
• Later he felt that whatever the society says “I wud help Jim.”

14. Mockery of religion.
• A theme Twain focuses on quite heavily on in this novel is
the mockery of religion.
• Throughout his life, Twain was known for his attacks on
organized religion.
• Huck Finn's sarcastic character perfectly situates him to
deride religion, representing Twain's personal views.
– In the first chapter, Huck indicates that hell sounds far
more fun than heaven
– He is against the religion education which says that if you
help a nigger, you will die in everlasting fire.

15. Human Relationships
• Freed from the hypocrisy and injustice of society, they
find themselves in what seems a paradise.
• Jim and Huck together make up a sort of alternative
family in an alternative place, apart from the society that
has only harmed them up to this point.
• Huck unconsciously places Jim's safety above his own,
and their separate struggles for freedom become one.
• Though Huck believes that he is doing a sin by helping a
nigger, yet he can not stop himself from helping him.

16. Symbols in the Novel
• The Mississippi River
– a source of freedom; a safe heaven
– Life
• The Land
– Real vs. Ideal (the river)
• Raft
– tool for escape
– safe place

17. The River $ The Land
• In Huck Finn, the river symbolizes freedom, and it becomes
symbolic of Huck’s journey to discover his natural virtue. The
current determines the direction of the raft as well as Huck’s life.
• There is a major contrast between life on the river and life on the
shore because life on the river (uncivilized) is peaceful and easy, yet
not totally without danger; however, life on the shore (civilized) can
be cruel, authoritarian, hypocritical, and reflective of what Twain
called the “Damned Human Race.”
• Life on the raft is paradoxical. Even though they are confined to a
small space on the raft, Huck and Jim experience greater freedom
on the raft.