Huckleberry Finn Research Paper

Huckleberry Finn: a Struggle for Freedom

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn so innocently reveals the potential nobility of

human nature in its well-loved main characters that it could never successfully support

anything so malicious as slavery.   Huckleberry Finn and traveling companion Jim, a

runaway slave, are unknowing champions for humility, mercy, and selflessness.   “Twain

used realistic language in the novel, making Huck’s speech sound like actual conversation

and imitating a variety of dialects to bring the other characters to life.”   The adventurous

nature of the story and its noble characters celebrates freedom from social and economic

restraint, and it is apparent from the beginning through his satiric portrayal of human

characteristics that Twain believes that all people deserve their own freedom.   When

Huck is unable to take the restrictions of life any longer, whether they be emotional or

physical, he simply releases himself and goes back to what he feels is right and what

makes him happy.   Hence, one of the most prominent and important themes of

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is freedom.   Freedom not only from Huck's internal

paradoxical struggle in defining right and wrong, but also freedom from Huck's personal

relationships with the Widow Douglas and his father, as well as freedom from the societal

institutions of government, religion, and prejudices.

“The plot is a deceptively simple story about two runaways: Huck, a white boy

fleeing civilization, and Jim, a black man running away from slavery.“   Throughout the

story Huck is plagued with an internal moral dilemma of what he feels is right and what

he is taught is right.   Huck is possibly the only character in the story that operates solely

on his own moral convictions.   This produces significant conflict when the accepted rules

of society, often corrupt in nature, are imposed upon him.   The best example of this... [continues]

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