Morality In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Throughout Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck’s struggle with moral alignment is continuously present. Huck faces the emotional implications of acting against the beliefs of the times as he aids Jim in escaping slavery. Though he offers assistance to Jim, Huck constantly battles with the idea of turning him in. Through this constant struggle Twain creates a contrast between morality – one’s own set of individual moral values, and moralism – the sets of moral values enforced by others. Raised in the Jim Crow south by the slave-owning Ms. Watson, Huck has been brought up on a very specific set of moral values. As those around him believe strongly in slavery and have racist ideals, these values have been rooted in Huck’s psyche. However, when Huck and Jim are isolated from the conservative population of the south during their travels, Huck’s own morality emerges. It is Huck’s sense of

Twain shows how easy it is for the young mind to be controlled by moralism – yet in this case, Huck still holds on to a semblance of his morality. While the intention to help Jim is still underlying, Huck quickly throws away his implicitly safer and more sensible plan in favor of Tom’s. Twain includes this moral confusion to show that Huck is still not fully able to understand his friendship with Jim. Huck sees freeing Jim as a positive thing, yet his is unable to explicitly comprehend its positivity being “a reaction to the injustice of slavery and to his friendship. In being implicitly aware of these reasons through his emotion, Huck is implicitly aware of the rightness of his action, although (…) he does not conceive of these reasons as moral” (Goldman 4-5). Twain shows that moralism is always present in Huck’s mind, however Huck’s morality is now stronger than ever before, even if he is not aware of