Huckleberry finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(Mark Twain)

Bea Bellón

Huckleberry Finn finds himself trapped in a repressive small village (St.Petersburg). The civilizing pressures such as going to church or speaking properly, imposed by Widow Douglas (perfect model of a ‘respectable’ habitant in that past american society), “she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me”, made Huckfeel anguished and so goes back with his father.
His rupture with his idealized southern society, is portrayed by the cease of companionship towards Tom Sawyer, representing this with his fantasies: “I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It was all lies, as in the Sunday school”, those lies symbolize the deliberate stagnancy of people’sideas, maintained via supersticion (religion), romantic fiction, aristocratic ideals, etc., which retains it from any progress, and he as a free-minded adolescent clearly rejects it.He is then victim of his father’s exposed cruelties (drunkard), and so his anxied freedom and disintegration of this hated society, leads to his final to breakup with it, by deciding to escape.
At the moment ofhis flee, he falls in with Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave. His corrupted young mind makes him first regard this as a horrible unloyal action, as he always though Miss Watson was very good to Jim as an owner, but then thought of his own situation towards Widow Douglas. So even though their causes of departure were different, he decides to ignore, although despising him, and with intention oftelling away once they are far from the village.
Together, they make their way down the Mississippi on a raft, and little by little, Jim’s company causes Huck to realise about other ways of thinking and honorable, human feelings, which before, were in some way unknowed to him. He experiences a progressive change towards Jim. Jim first replaces Huck’s loneliness and protects him from the solemnityhe suffered, as his escape from society to nature is described to be “terrible still” and “dead quiet”, “feeling quite satisfied, but by and by it got lonesome”.
Huck’s first demonstration of respect towards Jim, is noticed when Huck is humiliated by Jim, for having tried to trick Jim (he dreamt that they had been separated in the fog): “en when I wake up en find you back again all safe ansoun de tears come...so thakful”. “En all you wuz thinkin bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie...trash is wen people makes dey fren’s ashamed...”, to which Huck reacts: “It was 15 minutes before I could work myself up to go to a nigger, but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither”. He realises that Jim really appreciates him and now starts to takeseriously their friendship.
Despite this, Huck still feels some remorse of conscience and his doubtful position becomes distinctly remarkable as they approach the city of Cairo (confluence of Mississippi and Ohio rivers). Their initial plan was to make their way up the Ohio river to obtain Jim’s freedom on the Nothern States, and then working to earn enough money to buy his own wife and children,which obviously Jim looks forward to: “every little while he jumps up and says: ‘Dah she is!’ But it warn’t so he set down again”, “Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom”.
This situation conditions Huck to chose between the past set ideas or his new feelings. His ethical struggle is shown by his own contradictions: display of his ideas and feelings(which might have not been his own but imposed to him) “I begun to get it through my head that he was most free, and who was to blame for it?” “Everytime he danced around and says, ‘Dah is Cairo!’ it went through me like a shot”, and how he feels ashamed of them “I got feeling so mean and miserable”. His erroneous principles make him go on a canoe to give Jim up, but Jim’s comment “‘Pooty soon I’ll...