The Essay Essay, Research Paper

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n the Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, written by Samuel Clemens, a young boy by the name of Huck gets into various situations while trying to discover himself and just have fun. To keep the novel unified the author uses the recurrent motifs of slavery, violence, and caring.

Slavery has held good men like Jim captive in society. Slaves are not given any of the rights that the white people receive and have virtually no freedom. Men like Pap, being on a lower scale than most of the other white folk as he may be, his views do accurately depict and even parallel those of the average white person at the time. Pap is disgusted with the government and wont stand for the fact that they give the right to vote to blacks. He has the basic white supremacist beliefs and believes that it is a travesty that a black man should have the right to choose his senator or president. Jim, being a slave that he is, is stereotyped as being of a feeble order of humanity. The fact of the matter is though that he shows himself to be a better father to Huck than Pap had ever been. He shielded Huck from the pain he would have experienced if he had seen who that dead man in the house was. Huck was taught by the world that slavery was right. It was the way of life and the way it was supposed to be. “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” (206) Even though he thought this way he still knew the kind of man Jim was and disregarded what he knew to be right and wrong to save Jim

Throughout the story violence is used as a way to settle disputes or for a way for the people in the story to get what they want. Pap, for example, returned to find Huck so that he could take his money from him. While Huck stayed with his father for that short period of time, he was beaten. His father would constantly get drunk and usually beat him for no reason. The fact that Huck would not hand over the money and even went to court about the whole matter wasn’t helping. Buck Sheperdson was caught right in the middle of the feud between his family and the Grangerfords. While Huck was out in the forest with the slave that wanted to show him the water moccasins, Buck was shot and killed by a member of the Grangerfords. He had paid the ultimate price for the feud as his cousin Bud did only 4 months prior to his death, and as many of his other relatives have done so in the past. Once again violence takes its toll as the heroic Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn try to rescue Jim. While risking his lives to take Jim away with them, Tom was shot in the shoulder by a pursuing town member.

Throughout the novel Huck grows mentally and become somewhat more mature, thanks to the help of Jim. In the beginning of the novel and almost through the halfway point Huck is plays tricks on Jim. Huck doesn’t feel any remorse because he knows it is just a joke. Even so Jim’s feelings are hurt and Huck finally realizes that what he did wasn’t nice and he apologizes for the first time after their separation due to the steamboat. He knows that he shouldn’t have been so mean to Jim and he cares about him very much and he comes to the correct conclusion that he must apologize. He is even ready to sacrifice his life to help someone in need even if it is wrong. When Aunt Sally sold Jim so another man, Huck knew that it would be wrong to rescue him but with all that in mind, he knew that Jim was his friend and that he had to save him no matter what. This shows the true friendship that they have. “ Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.” (222). After all of the sneaky tricks and down right robbery that the King and the Duke have pulled off so far, they deserved to be tarred and feathered. Even so Huck believes that it is a very harsh punishment and he cannot respect his own body since he is part of the population as the other people.

The novel is held together by the constant recurrence of violence, slavery and caring on the part of Huck. Even being exposed to some of the terrible things he has seen hasn’t helped to diminish Huck’s caring nature. The ultimate growth in character though happens when he is forced to make a decision about slavery and whether or not he should save Jim .