A_Brief_Analysis_of

A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clements,was born in Horida,Missouri,on November 30, 1835.When he was four the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town of about five hundred people, situated on the Mississippi River.Hannibal was a small, backward,riverside town and Twain s recollection of his years there exerted a powerful hold on his imagination.It was the model for St Petersbury inThe adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When his father died in 1847,he became a printer s apprentice and then a printer both in Hannibal and in New York city.As the result of a steamboat journey down the Mississippi in 1857,he decided to embark on a career as a riverboat pilot.Twain was a riverboat pilot for four years, during which time,he became familiar with all of the towns along the Mississippi River which played such an important part in his creatingThe adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was also during this period, he became acquainted with every type of characters depicted in the novel. The writing of this book was evidently not easy for Twain and he kept doing it for a number of years.The adventures of Huckleberry Finnwas a very personal novel for Twain.This story of a young boy and a runaway slave journeying on the Mississippi river involved Twain complex attitudes to the past times of his own youth.More significantly,it was written out of a deeply felt concern with the whole question of personal freedom and integrity. At the deepest level,it explores the possibility of creative independence within the confines of human society.Twain express his own thoughts and attitudes through the narration of Huck Finn.Huck Finn comes from the very lowest level of society.He is an outcast with no education and his father is a poor drunkard.But Huck Finn is good and noble. He desires to be free and escapes from the civilized world.He floats along with a runaway slave—Jim and tries his best to help him.He changes his prejudice against Black people and comes to accepting Jim as his friend.He is a shrewd and ingenious boy.He dependents on his such qualities to avoid dangers and difficulties during his travel. The adventures of Huckleberry Finnis one of Mark Twain s masterpieces and has been regarded as one of the greatest books in Western literature. 2.Desiring to be Free Huck Finn is an outcast without education.He lives with Widow Douglas who wants to civilize him, but he likes to be free and he finds with the old lady very hard to endure,he says: The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me;but it was rough living in the house all the time considering how dismal regular and delent the window was in all her ways; and so when I couldn t stand it no longer I lit out.I got into my old rags and my sugar hog shead again, and was free and statisfied.1And Huck Finn sees Miss Watson s traditional view of “a pearly gate”concept of heaven as being essentially boring and restrictive. The Widow Douglas s view is somewhat more appealing,but Huck Finn would prefer to go to a more exciting place.The restriction of living with the Widow Douglas accelerates the forming of the idea of Huck Finn s quest for freedom.He wants to escape from the civilized world and to be free.And he plans to“light out”for a different territory. The destruction and tyranny of Huck Finn s father are other reasons for his escaping and desiring to be free.Huck Finn s father is a part of that society which Huck Finn wishes.In contrast to Miss Watson s hypocrisy,his father presents the brutality and severity of civilization that threaten to destroy Huck Finn. His father believes that money and education are juxtaposed and since he has neither,he doesn t want Huck Finn to have either.Huck Finn s freedom is modified by the presence of his father s actions.Living in the woods,his father beasts him quite frequently and sometimes leaves him locked up in the cabin for a long time.Once when his father returns from town, he is so drunk that he almost kills him. Huck Finn is mature enough to recognize the danger and only when he comes convinced that his father represents and immediate threat to his life does he decide to escape.Throughout his plans to escape,Huck Finn is more concerned for his life than anything else and prefers simply to disappear and begin a new life. Huck Finn s concept of freedom is modified only when he feels that his life is endangered and that his father does not“feel right and kind towards others”.The freedom is also modified by Huck Finn s feeling of loneliness and isolation. Huck Finn s desire to be free,at its deepest levels, explores the possibility of an individual achieving true freedom in society.He is constantly forced to flee from a civilized society in order to preserve his sense of integrity and identity. It s only when he is on the river in the company of Jim that he feels secure and natural.Having escaped from the feud,he remarks that there is no home like a raft and other places seem to be cramped up and smothery but a raft is not.And he feels free and easy and comfortable very much on a raft. It is striking that whenever,Huck Finn comes into contact with the people along the river he is forced to assume a false identity.His initial escape from his own cruel father and the society of St Peterbury forces him to feign his own death. Brian Donnelly argues that Huck Finn s true life could only be achieved by dying in the eyes of the people and by escaping down the Mississippi River. Huck Finn s desire to escape is wholly characteristic throughout the novel. All of his power of invention is directed towards escaping. For instance, he feels uncomforable among the crowd who gather to watch the Boggs-Sherburn duel.His behaviour at this point is typical of his usual reaction.Huck Finn is,by nature,an outside of and a refugee from civilization.At the end of the novel Huck Finn says: ……and so there ain t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it,because if I d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I would t a tackled it and ain t agoing to no more.But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest,because Aunt Sally she s going to adopt me and sivilized me,and I can t stand it.I benn there before.2 These sentences imply that the only way for Huck Finn to preserve his freedom and integrity is to flee from the present society into the safety of the wilderness. 3.Good and Noble Huck Finn is a good and noble boy.All of his virtues come from his good heart and his sense of humanity.The contrast between his physical raggedness and his highly civilized nature is an ironic reversal of the predominant situation in the novel where a pleasing surface usually conceals a corrupt or barbaric reality,as in the Grangerford household. Huck Finn s goodness is always unconscious and spontaneous, arising out of the deepest recesses of his nature.He always cares about the welfare of others and can not bear to see anyone suffer.He concerns about the drunk man in the circus.He shows sympathy for the nieces of Peter Wilks and saves money for them: I says to myself,this is another one that I m letting him robber her of her money.And when she got through, they all just laid themselves not to make feel at home and know I was amongst friends.I felt so ornery and low down and mean,that I says to myself,my mind s made up;I ll hive that money.3 His sympathies even go to those who are totally unworthy of his attention such as the stranded robbers and the king and the duke. Huck Finn s first thought after escaping is to save Jim Turner(a murderer)from being murdered by the other two robbers.Even after his escape, he conceives of the clever plan of sending the man with the ferry in order to try and save the three robbers from death.Having attempted to save them,Huck Finn ironically and erroneously thinks that the Widow Douglas would be proud of him protecting the lives of these robbers.When the king and duke have been tarred and feathered, his comment on seeing the confidence trick cheats humiliated is wholly representative: I see they had a king and the duck astraddle of a rail- that is,I knowed it was the king and the duke,though they was all over tar and feathers,and didn t look like nothing in the world that was human—just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes.Well,it made me sick to see it,it seemed like I couldn t ever feel any hardness against them any mre in the world.It was dreadful thing to see Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.4 Huck Finn witnesses many instances of cruelty, brutality and hypocrisy in the townships along the river. His respinse to all of them is sorrow and disgust.When he sees the depths of brutality to which the members of the Grangerford and Shepherdson families sink during the fend,he says: ……the man tun along the bank shouting at them and singing out,‘kill them,kill them!’It made me so sick.I most fell out of the tree.I ain t a going to tell all that happened—it would make me sick again if I was to for that.I wished I hadn t ever come ashore that night to see such things.I ain t ever going to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about them.5 The king and duke are counting on the ignorance of the town people and the emotional upset caused by the death of Miss Wilker s uncle to separate the girls from their proper inheritance. Huck Finn rebels against the atrocious king and duke.He is disgusted with their trifling with human beings. It is because Huck Finn is such a good and noble person that his moral dilemma in helping a Negro slave to escape constitutes a profound condemnation of the way of life and moral values of American South.His conscience has been formed by the morality of St Petersburg and he never quite succeeds in freeing himself from that society s corrupt standards.Huck Finn s formed conscience is the measure of the moral corruption of the community that shaped it.So he sinks into an inner struggle.He becomes increasingly caught between his friendship with Jim and the common social standards.Finally,he decides to tear up the letter which he has written to Miss Watson to inform and he chooses to be damned rather than to give Jim up to Miss Watson: ……says to myself:All right,then,I ll go to hell—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts,and awful words,but they was said.And I let them stay said;and never thought no more about reforming.I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I could take up wickedness again,which was in may line,being brung up to it,and the other warn t.And for a starter,I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again;and if I could think up anything worse,I would do that,too;because as long as I was in,and in for good,I might as well go the whole hog.6 For Huck Finn the journey on the raft with Jim is a voyage of moral discovery.This is particularly the case in his relationship with Jim.At the early stage,Huck Finn looks upon Jim as a Negro slave with common attitude. However,as they progress down the river,he changes his mind and no longer has prejudice against black people.He gradually comes to see Jim as a human being and begins to accept him as his friend. Yet, Huck Finn never fully succeeds in breaking free from the prevailing attitude towards Negroes. 4.Shrewd and Ingenious Huck Finn is shrewd and ingenious. He is both intelligent and very inventive.Although he is uneducated, nature teaches him a lot of things.When he first suspects that his father has returned,Huck Finn s immediate action is to try to give all his money to Judge Thatcher so that he won t be persected by his father.This is the first time that Huck Finn shows his shrewdness:that is,he knows that his father will leave him alone if he has no money and since he dreads an encounter with his father,he tries to give away the money so that he won t have to lie.Huck Finn s plan for an escapefrom his father also demonstrates his shrewdness and ingenuity and as well as his profound common sense.When his father is gone into town he cuts a hole in the wall of the cabin.He kills a pig and spinkles its blood around so that his father will think that he has been murdered by robbers.And no one can find him. Huck Finn s shrewdness and ingenuity stand him in good stead in the many difficult and dangerous situations which he is about to encounter on the river.Huck Finn disguises himself as a girl into the village to see what is happening there.He invents a believable story to conceal his real identity,he is also unable to remember the story which he tells and often has to resort to another ruse or shrewd trick in order to find out what he has said earlier. He seldom has a particular plan in mind,but,instead,he relies upon his native ability.And while he takes off his disguise,he is able to construct another story which gets him out of difficulty.When Huck Finn and Jim travel on the river, two slave hunters want to search their raft. Before they get there,Huck Finn tells them the impression that there is a man with smallpox on the raft so that he could protect Jim.Huck Finn s shrewdness and ingenuity are both seen in the story which he tells the man and more directly,in his knowledge that the man,being selfish and narrow,will not help him.This also shows that Huck Finn has a profound knowledge of human nature. Huck Finn also uses his knowledge of human nature to protect himself and Jim.He makes up a story with Jim which the king and duke believe.He sees through their facade and is able to make his own story credible.Huck Finn s insight suggests his knowledge of human natrue,a knowledge which has the practical purpose of protecting both.After separating with Jim,Huck Finn goes ashore alone and finds a large house. He uses his shrewdness again and creates another new identity for himself.When he forgets his name,he has to be shrewd enough to conceive a plan whereby Buck Grangerford has to spell his name.Huck Finn has such an understanding of people that he easily gulls a boy with the same age,one who loves to show off his knowledge of spelling,into spelling Huck Finn s assumed name.Then he is able to rediscover his new identity. 5.Conclusion Mark Twain was a realist and humorist.He depicted mostly the lower class of society.His contribution to the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was partly through his theories of localism in American fiction and partly through his colloquialism. Twain was referred to“as America s funny man”,and even after his death; his works continued to guide of the majority of American people. Mark Twain preferred to represent social life through portraits of local places which he knew best and drew heavily from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places.In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one such example..Huck Finn is a living and breathing personality. It is through his use of language and his activities that Twain creates character and sets down objective truth: Huck Finn is uneducated;he dislikes civilized ways because they are rsetrictive and hypocritical he likes freedom;Huck Finn is a good, noble, shrewd and ingenious boy, he is concerned with other people and helps Jim to escape. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnhas been regarded as one of the greatest books in Western literature and Western civilization. Ernest Hemingway noted:“all modern American literature comes from one bookThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”