How Did Pap Influence Huck Finn

Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of a young boy who is just beginning to mature into an adult. He and his friend Tom Sawyer gain a small fortune of $6,000 and Huck’s father, Pap, who has been absent for virtually all of Huck’s life, is seeking it. Because of the constant abuse from his father, he is forced to run away and start on an adventure down the Mississippi River with his companion, Jim, a runaway slave. Although he leaves his home, it still has an influence on him. Both Pap and the two women he lives with, Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, have great influences on him. The women influence him positively while Pap provides a much more negative influence. Widow Douglas and Miss Watson try to be positive
Huck first introduces Pap early in the story and his appearance is noted right away. Huck describes him as; “most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray: so was his long, mixed-up whiskers.” (18). He is clearly described as a filthy, horrid man. Twain later describes his clothes, and they are tatters and rags. However, the most intense part of Twain’s description was the section devoted to Pap’s face: “There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl.” (19) Huck clearly depicts Pap as a very evil scary looking man, whose image is enough to make someone ill. His personality doesn’t stray from this image. He is the town drunk, always stumbling around at night, ranting on about the injustices of the world. He also is illiterate which is why he tried to make the first big influence on Huck that we see. Pap tells Huck that he cannot go to school. He tells him, “You think you’re better’n than your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t [read or write]? I’ll take it out on you…you drop that school, you hear?” (19) Pap demands that Huck quits school, although it is obviously against the wishes of his guardian. Huck originally keeps going to school to both avoid disappointing the widow, and to spite Pap, who said Huck was only learning to become better than his father. Eventually, both to get custody of his son and his son’s fortune, Pap kidnaps Huck. He keeps him locked in a barn all the time and is a constant bad influence. All of what was taught to him at his old home is being overridden by Pap. An example is Huck’s swearing. At his old house, the women clearly would not allow it, but Pap’s stance