Fairness In Huck Finn

Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated columnist and talk show host, once said “Goodness is about character- integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.” In the American classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character Huck Finn is a typical teenage boy who doesn't like school, or old ladies who try to teach him to go to church and to have good manners. Huck, accompanied by a runaway slave Jim, runs away and travels down the Mississippi River, facing all kinds of exciting adventures. Along the river, Huck faces adventures that teach him more about responsibility, fairness, and equality than anything he had learned in school or in church. With the lessons the river gives him, Huck ultimately becomes a better person.

While on the river Huck first

He gets a lesson in equality when “People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum”(42). Previous to his adventures on the river with Jim he thinks that he should turn Jim into the two slave traders because he realizes that at the time slavery was a legal law and Jim was breaking that law so he thought that was an injustice. However with the quote Huck understands that even though it's an injustice for Jim to be running away from slavery, the bigger injustice is the whole institution of slavery. Thus, the character of Huck Finn, who begins the journey down the river as an uneducated, immoral boy develops into a character of high moral virtue. This is seen in his actions- which though they may not have been approved by church going ladies and school teachers- prove him to be responsible, fair and a champion of equality. This is still important today because most teenagers can relate to the story of Huck Finn's adventures that allowed him to grow up and blossom into a good hearted young