Huckleberry Finn Morality

Huckleberry Finn is exclusive to Huck’s thoughts, so the reader only knows how he experiences things. This impacts the novel greatly, particularly because since Huck is so young and impressionable. But unlike Tom, who is very susceptible to accepting whatever sivilization wants him to believe, Huck is also a realist who challenges any belief or idea until he is able to witness it for himself. For Huck, seeing is believing. Tom is quite literally “by the books”. While suggesting ideas for their gang Tom creates guidelines they have to follow; “I’ve seen it in the books’ and so of course that’s what we’ve got to do”(Twain). And even though Huck looks up to Tom, he fights against the books. “But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”(Twain).

In the beginning, when he finds Jim, the only reason Huck doesn’t return Jim to his “rightful owner” , is due to the fact that he does not want to risk being found himself; so Jim stays. But Huck still feels guilt,“I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, ‘But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody’”( Twain, 88). Then they go through challenges together and experience many hardships together, and as mentioned before they begin a kinship. One day, while Huck is away, Jim is captured and sold into slavery again. Huck has now met his moral climax, does he let Jim go because it’s the “right” thing to do, or does he save his friend. Just as he’s about to come clean to Mrs. Watson in a letter, Huck decides against it. “Thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell...and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world…’All right, then, I’ll go to hell’- and tore it up”(Twain, 215). The reader is left rooting for Huck because he is going to save Jim, the character that the audience has grown to admire for his strength. Huck has changed, and Americans can celebrate because improvement is