A Boy’s Life

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”

So begins The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884. It is the first book to be written completely in vernacular American English and in the voice of a rural boy in his early teens. Though surrounded by controversy from the beginning, making it one of the most banned books in America, Ernest Hemingway said of it, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. . . There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” It is a novel that has much to say to readers today, especially about boys.

A Boy Learning to Be a Man

In some ways, Huck is the quintessential boy whom Anthony Esolen extols in his book Defending Boyhood. He is resourceful, adventurous, and plucky. Though he plays second fiddle to the title character in Tom Sawyer, Huck is clearly the hero of Huckleberry Finn. When held captive by his alcoholic father, he devises a successful escape plan—utterly different from the nonsensical plan devised by Tom to liberate Jim, the runaway slave. After throwing in his lot with Jim, Huck embarks on a thrilling, though often perilous, rafting journey down the Mississippi with the initial aim of delivering Jim into freedom. Always quick with a story—though not always consistent with details—Huck uses his wits to protect both himself and Jim. When they encounter murderous thieves on a crashed steamboat, Huck risks his life to see that the criminals face justice. Huck is a boy learning to be a man.

In that process of maturing, Huck’s greatest growth lies in the development of his moral sense, which he begins to figure out on his own in a break with his shiftless father, who had abducted him from the care of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson with two equally vile motives: first, because he resents Huck for learning how to read and write and wants him to quit going to school (Huck is happy to oblige him), and second, to secure Huck’s $6,000 fortune, awarded after he and Tom had discovered stolen gold in a cave in Tom Sawyer. Fortunately, Huck’s money is safely kept in a trust fund overseen by Judge Thatcher, but Pap Finn nevertheless keeps him locked in a shack in the woods. While Huck enjoys living free of the women’s attempts to “sivilize” him, he also recognizes that his father’s cruel control is deeply wrong. Huck’s clever escape is the first step on his journey into manhood.

Moral Sense & Sensibilities

It continues in earnest when Huck encounters Jim, a slave who escaped from Miss Watson. After placing a dead rattlesnake in Jim’s bedroll, which leads to Jim getting bitten by its mate, Huck is struck with the realization that he has endangered a fellow human being’s life. Though he has briefly considered turning Jim over to slave hunters, when Huck faces them, he instead fabricates a tale to protect Jim. Later, the two are separated in a fog. Once reunited, Huck tells the distraught Jim it was just a dream, but Jim is hurt that someone he cares about would lie to him. Now guilt-stricken, Huck learns about the obligations of relationship. As their adventures together continue, Jim shares a memory of his daughter, who was rendered deaf by scarlet fever, and Huck sees more clearly that Jim has human affections like his own. Life together on the raft forges a bond between boy and man that eventually overcomes the inhumane assumptions embedded in the world in which Huck had been living.

Encounters on land during their voyage down the river also contribute to Huck’s developing morality. Taken in by one family involved in a feud, he witnesses the senselessness and tragic cost of commitment to a grudge. He watches a Southern colonel gun down an unarmed drunk, which confronts him with the human capacity for cruelty. For an extended period spent with two conmen who join Huck and Jim to escape their latest victims, Huck witnesses the potential for vileness in the human soul. These two criminals bilk unsuspecting villagers with a ridiculous “show” and attempt to cheat three orphaned girls of their inheritance, and Huck realizes he and Jim must separate themselves from the scoundrels.

When he learns that one of them has sold Jim for forty dollars, Huck encounters his greatest moral quandary. At first, he thinks Jim would be better off with Miss Watson, even though that would mean he would remain a slave. But after contemplating the consequences of arranging for that exchange, Huck says, “The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling.” To resolve his crisis of conscience, he tries to pray to be conformed to the “Christian” values of his former pro-slavery environment. Yet in the end, he confesses, “You can’t pray a lie.” Despite the confusion in his young mind, Huck decides to tear up the letter he has written and to set about finding and freeing Jim.

Cultural Commentary & Criticism

Of course, Huck Finn is about more than the protagonist’s moral coming of age. Mark Twain directs his satirical eye at the hypocrisy and shallowness that characterized much of American life in his time. The Grangerford-Shepherdson feud unmasks the attractive appearance of two aristocratic families to expose the vengeful brutality they assume as their prerogative. The incident with Col. Sherburn exposes the cowardice of mobs, as well as the arrogance of the self-entitled. And the townspeople’s credulousness toward the conmen lays bare the gullibility Twain saw in many of his countrymen.

Even though he is more than a little skeptical toward organized religion and pokes fun at the hypocrisy he sees in several “Christian” characters, Twain’s parodies both amuse and prickle as they highlight real hypocrisy. And of course, Huck’s decision to free Jim is genuinely noble, true, and right.

The Art of the Matter

This parody-filled book, which has absorbed readers since its first publication, exemplifies the traditional role of art. It challenges our assumptions and exposes our faults and foibles, while engaging us on points we may see from a different perspective. Twain’s art is a form of civil discourse, unlike much contemporary art, which too often functions primarily to express (or stir up) outrage. T. S. Eliot called this novel “the only one of Mark Twain’s various books which can be called a masterpiece.”

Perhaps that is why until very recently it was frequently assigned in American high schools. However, this classic includes more than 200 instances of a most offensive racial term, as well as 11 instances of the word slave. Despite any context in which they might be justified, these are words the “new Puritans” cannot abide. So they cast Huck Finn on the bonfire they are kindling to burn down the West.

Yet, the perceptive reader can see beyond the offensive language as well as the religious skepticism. Yes, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn may offend some today, as it did when it was first published, but it can also transform us, along with our perceptions of society. Twain’s masterful artistry and his ability to make us examine ourselves still make this “boy’s book” well worth reading.