Literary Analysis #3

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a story about this boy named Huck who lives with a widow named Douglas, who Huck doesn’t like because she enforces civil ways upon him. Huck has a lot of money. After many attempts of getting his money, Pap, his dad, kidnaps Huck and puts him in a house where he escapes. He decides to run away, so he goes to the Mississippi river where he rides down it in a boat. He runs into Jim, Douglas’s sister Miss Watson’s slave, and they both run away in search of freedom. This is where there adventure starts. They become good friends while running away together, they find a house with a dead man in it, they find a wrecked boat where they encounter robbers but escape with all the loot, then Jim, the wanted runaway slave, almost gets caught but Huck manages to lie to the men that almost captured Jim. They get separated. Huck ends up with this silly family who have a feud their neighbors, there he is caught up in the whole rivalry but soon enough Jim finds him with the raft and they both leave. They meet a King and the Duke who take over the story line for a bit and sell Jim to a farmer and he goes to find him. Huck finds out that these people are Tom’s parents so together with Tom they rescue Jim but soon after he ends up a slave again to save Tom. But actually Jim is free because Miss Watson died and in her will Jim is free.
2. The Theme of this novel to me is racism. This is a major part of the novel, because as a slave running away, Jim faces many struggles. He is constantly reminded of the dangers of running away and is scared of being captured. Huck and Jim overcome the race barrier after Huck overcomes his inner struggle of whether or not to save Jim. Huck's idea of racism is based on his upbringing, but he questions the validity of his race’s values.
3. Mark Twain’s tone is ethical but also satirical. On example of this moralistic tone :
“I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all the happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell”……. “I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me up against him”
4. Symbolisms: the river representing freedom and the river is freedom for Jim.
Allusions: The Bible is everywhere in this novel, Don Quixote, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet during the plays.