Huckleberry Finn and reading literature like a professor

Huckleberry Finn and How to Read Literature like a Professor

Four aspects of the Quest: Mark Twain's the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The quester: Huckleberry Finn must escape a stultifying life at the Widow Douglas's and the wrath of his drunken father Pap. Huckleberry is joined by the runaway slave Jim, who is also trying to escape being sold 'down South' by Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas' sister.

A place to go: The two questers must head up the Mississippi, to the North (Jim states he wants to go to Illinois) where Huckleberry can be free of civilizing influences and Jim can be a free man.

A stated reason to go there: If Huck does not escape then Huck will remain under the thumb of the Widow and Jim will be sold to cruel masters in the deep South.

Challenges and trials: Huckleberry and Jim must survive the risks posed by getting involved with the warring clans of the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, the pursuit of the lawmen who believe that Jim may have murdered Huck, and the antics of two fake Shakespearean charlatans.

The real reason to go: Self-knowledge about Huckleberry and Jim's roles in their society. Huckleberry has always existed on the margins of society, because of his class. Even at the beginning of the novel he intuitively senses the falseness of piety and middle-class morality, embodied by the religious drawings of the bloodthirsty Grangerford's dead daughter. Unlike the civilized Miss Watson, Huck instinctively treats Jim like an equal, and his only qualms about allowing Jim to seek freedom come from socially learned ideas about race. Huck's boyhood idol Tom Sawyer behaves cruelly to Jim and Tom uses Jim at the end of the novel to play a childhood prank. Huckleberry learns that freedom is only possible on a raft, away from civilization. This is why, at the end of the novel, he vows to head for uncharted territories, and to never write again. Jim learns the true meaning of friendship as well as gains his freedom.