Lighting_Out_for_the_Territory_in__Huckleberry_Finn_

Huckberry Finn: A Young Boy’s Quest For a New Identity In Mark Twain’s controversial novel, Adventures of Huckberry Finn, Huck Finn is a young boy who decides to flee from his life in St. Petersburg, Missouri by way of the Mississippi River, leaving behind his abusive father, Pap, and the Window Douglas and Miss Watson, who have taken him in with hopes of civilizing him. After a frightening night during which a drunken Pap attacks Huck, he devises a plan to escape. He fakes his murder and high-tails it out of Missouri on a raft that he had found, leaving behind everything that he knows, with high hopes of escaping his identity and the smothering constraints of society. Huck unexpectedly teams up with the runaway slave, Jim, and on their quest for freedom and new identities, Huck learns how to be a friend, how to love, how to think for himself, and successfully break away from life as he once knew it. On his journey, Huck is a man of many disguises. George Jackson, Sarah Williams, and even, Tom Sawyer, are just a few of those different aliases that he goes by. This shows Huck’s transformation on the river. He can’t go by Huckleberry Finn when he is on land and forced to encounter people that conduct their lives as respectable members of society because he no longer considers himself to be one. Also, whenever Huck goes “undercover” he is often nervous, and forced to create elaborate lies, however, when he finally able to get back to the river, he feels a great sense of relief. The river is what he considers home, it’s where he feels safe and he can be honest with himself. For example, after living with the Grangerfords for a short amount of time, their on-going feud with the Shepherdsons shifts into high gear, but Huck manages to escape with Jim back to the Mississippi River. Huck says, “I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seems so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft” (Twain, 107). On the river, Huck can be himself and carefree, while civilization appears to be suffocating and corrupt. Huck Finn is very ignorant to the “rights and wrongs” of the world. After being taken in by my Widow Douglass and her sister, they attempt to teach him proper manners, dress him in clean clothes, provide him with an education, as well as, teach him about religion. Many of these teachings are major contradictions, since the Bible preaches to “love thy neighbor” yet slavery is being enforced at the same time. Based off of what he is taught, Huck is unable to decipher that for himself while he is still living in Missouri. However, this begins to change when Huck befriends Jim on the Mississippi River and he agrees to help Jim reach the free states. Out on the open river and being among nature has a altering affect on Huck. Here, there isn’t anyone to tell him what’s right or wrong and he is able to consider the circumstances for himself. Over the course of the novel, Huck battles with his guilt with helping Jim, because in society’s eyes, Jim is not a person, but property of Miss Watson. There were a few moments when Huck would question his newfound freedom and almost revert back to the beliefs of the land. In Chapter 16, he is disturbed by Jim’s talk of Abolistionists and freedom, so he decides to turn Jim in. However, when he is asked if Jim is black or white, he can’t bring himself to say it. Initially he is “feeling bad and low” about his decision but then decides “s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now' No, say I, I’d feel bad---I’d feel just the same way I do now” (Twain 85). Huck is still adjusting to his beliefs. He knows that the law says he must turn Jim in, but at the same time, he feels bad about it because he considers Jim a friend although society tells him that’s not right. A pivotal moment occurs in Chapter 30, when Huck is going to write a letter to Miss Watson about the whereabouts of Jim. Then he starts to reflect on the experiences that he and Jim had shared. “And I got to thinking over out trip down the river; and I see him before me, all the time, in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me again him, but only the other kind” (Twain, 193). Thinking about these moments, Huck professes that rather than send his friend back in to slavery he would willingly go to hell. In that moment, Huck became a changed young man. Huck thought that up and running away from Missouri, leaving behind his father, his teachings, his identity, and his so-called friends, would be the answer to his problems. And while this may not the case for some people, it worked for him. As a result of leaving, he matured into an independent, young boy who was able to conclude the rights and wrongs of the world without the help of a contradicting and corrupt society. He learned the true meaning of friendship and love, how to follow his heart and trust his instincts. At the conclusion of the novel, Tom’s aunt wants take in Huck. “But I reckon I got to light out for Territotry ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before” (Twain, 262). Huck knows that civility isn’t right for him with all he’s learned, and now, society can’t take that away from him. Running away gave him a better understanding of himself, and now is going going to continue his journey out to “Injun Territory” where civilization doesn’t exist.