Huck Finn is the narrator of the novel, a 14-year-old boy who escapes his abusive father and restrictive guardians to go on an adventure down the Mississippi River. He befriends Jim, a runaway slave, and the two develop a close bond as they travel together isolated from society. Though initially viewing Jim as inferior due to his upbringing, Huck comes to see Jim as a thinking, feeling person and valuable friend, helping him achieve freedom despite being taught that slavery is right.

1. THE ADVENTURES OF
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Characters and Characterizations: Huck and Jim

2. WHO IS HUCK? Huckleberry Finn is the central figure and narrator
of the novel that bears his name.
 He is one of the best-known adolescent characters in literature, and his plainspoken
account of his experiences on the Mississippi River comprises an unforgettably comic,
satiric, and resonant vision of American life.
 Narrated entirely in the vernacular, Huckleberry Finn is considered the first novel to
sustain a regional dialect from beginning to end.
 About fourteen years old when the story takes place, Huck has been haphazardly raised
by a cruel, neglectful father and subsequently adopted by the kindhearted Widow
Douglas and her hypocritically pious sister Miss Watson, who hope to “sivilize” the boy.
Though somewhat drawn to the orderly, nurtured life offered by the two women, Huck
likes his freedom more.

3. WHO IS HUCK? Despite his essential trustworthiness, however, huck is not
always a reliable narrator, and Twain sometimes employs his naiveté to
expose folly
 Huck lapses easily into smoking, swearing, wearing rags, and fishing his days away, troubled
only by the frequent beatings he receives from Pap Finn. Like the quintessential outsider he
is, Huck eventually forsakes the comfort and restrictions of the Widow Douglas's house for
independent solitude elsewhere.
 As an uncultured member from the lowest levels of society, Huck embodies a distinctly
American ideal: the effort of the common man, relying not on tradition but on his own
ingenuity, to achieve a kind of moral rejuvenation through immersion in the Edenic
wilderness. Other critics claim Huck is no pioneer but an alienated vagabond challenging the
values of American society. In any case the diverse appeal of this memorable character
attests to Twain's great narrative skill and understanding of human nature.

4. MORE ABOUT HUCK
 Huck exhibits his common sense and resourcefulness when, for instance, he dresses as a
girl and ventures to shore to gather information, or when he protects Jim from discovery
by pretending that the raft is carrying a victim of smallpox.
 Although Huck is willing to lie or even steal in order to survive, he always maintains his
own integrity and admirable code of ethics.
 His struggle with his conscience over whether he should turn Jim in to the authorities is the
most significant aspect of his journey toward maturity, for he grapples with and overcomes
the “training” of his society and takes an independent stance based on his own inherent
sense of right and wrong.
 Huck's basic compassion for others is evident not only in how he comes to view Jim but in
the pity he feels for the murdered Buck Grangerford, the preyed-upon Wilks sisters, and
even the thoroughly disreputable King and Duke after they are tarred, feathered, and
ridden out of town on a rail; despite their being scoundrels, he comments that “human
beings can be awful cruel.”

5. HUCK & JIM: Isolated together on the raft and protected there from the corruption and
dangers of civilization, huck and jim experience their independence in natural surroundings and
develop an appreciation of each other's companionship.
 Huck's meeting with Jim on Jackson's Island and subsequent trip down the river on the raft
marks the story's transition from simple boy's idyll to complex epic
 Taught to view slaves as less than human, Huck has been told it is wrong to help someone
who is the property of someone else to run away.
 He discovers that Jim is a thinking, feeling person— shown in the scene when Jim chides
Huck for playing a practical joke on him—and Huck also realizes that Him is a valuable,
devoted friend.
 This figures in his decision, conveyed by Twain with brilliant irony, to “sin” against society
and accept eternal damnation by helping Jim escape.

6. WHO IS JIM? Jim is the runaway slave who
accompanies huck on his journey down the Mississippi.
 Owned by the falsely pious Miss Watson, Jim flees because he overhears her planning to sell
him to a slave trader for eight hundred dollars. Jim plans to seek freedom in a Northern
state, then earn enough money to buy his beloved wife and children out of slavery.
 Like Huck, Jim's origin in a very low level of society has no relation to his worth, and he
endures oppression, danger, and hardship with strength and dignity.
 His quest for freedom parallels that of Huck (who flees not institutionalized bondage but a
cruel father and restrictive guardians), demonstrating Twain's condemnation not only of
slavery in the pre-Civil War South but of social injustice in general.
 Initially viewed as a childlike, inferior being by Huck, Jim gains importance and individuality
in his friend's eyes as their journey progresses. In the scene in which Huck plays a trick on
Jim, making him believe that he dreamed something that actually happened, Jim then chides
Huck for treating a loyal friend so shabbily, and this scene is often cited as an important one
in illuminating their relationship.

7. HUCK & JIM’S RELATIONSHIP: Most critics contend that Huck
finds a substitute father in Jim. However, some critics contend
 that the relationship Huck and Jim is homosexual;
 that Twain's portrayal of Jim racist and demeaning, citing the slave's foolishness, gullibility, and
tendency to exaggerate as evidence that he is intended to resemble the African Americans
caricatured in the minstrel shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries;
 that Jim is one of few adults in the novel who exhibits the virtues of compassion, logic, and
self-sacrifice, and that in fact Twain intentionally employed stereotypes in order to expose
Southern bigotry;
 other scholars have identified Jim's portrayal as simultaneously ludicrous and admirable,
suggesting Twain was ambivalent about African Americans.