Huck's Adventure Down The Mississippi With Jim example essay topic

While Mark Twain's imagination takes center stage in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and creates a world in which his characters are caught in implausible circumstances and situations, it nevertheless should not lose any credibility of its realism and of how things truly were in the Old South during slavery. A real fiction novel is often described as a plot that possesses realistic settings, situations and occurrences. It provides believable story lines and never leaves you guessing if something in the plot really could have happened. However, on the other end of the fiction spectrum is the fantasy fiction novel. The fantasy fiction novel's lines are purposely filled with adventure and sometimes unbelievable happenings. It gives the imagination a wild and amusing ride, but it doesn't allow you to relate the plot to everyday life.

What Twain has done in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is combine the two - real fiction and fantasy fiction - to assemble what many consider The Great American Novel. With its gamboling tale of Huck's adventure and moral growth as he floats down the Mississippi River with Jim, and while it captures the excitement and the diverse parade that was the United States during that period of the late 19th century, Twain was able to do all this while still exploring the heart of America's problem then, which was slavery and the hypocrisy that developed around it in the South. He took the most serious problem this country has ever seen, and shed a witty light over its dark shadow. Although the book used crude and offensive language towards slaves and gave a cruel depiction of the South, it would be hard to argue that the depiction was a horrible distortion of the truth. Admit tingly, the tale of young Huck Finn's journey - between his brief stay in "civilization" at the Widow Douglas' house to his adventurous holdover with Tom Sawyer and Jim at Aunt Sally's place - Twain takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride that throughout gives a number of opportunities to question the amount of realism involved. However, if Twain's classic were to be truly appreciated as a real fiction novel, the book must be broken down into two separate ideals; the real and the fiction.

In the book, Twain depicts a realistic attitude toward slavery through Jim, the runaway slave, while simultaneously giving the reader a wild ride of the moral growth of the orphaned boy Huck. Huck, who is believed to be around 13 years old in the novel, realizes that the civilized world with the Widow Douglas is incapable of protecting him against his drunken father, nor is it in him to live that way. Growing up without a mother, who died when he was young, and having a father who constantly beat him, Huck is all alone in an unfamiliar world. After Huck realizes that civilization cannot protect him from his father and he runs away -albeit during an unbelievable moment in his father's shack- Twain is able to show, even with sometimes more unrealistic encounters, how the United States and its people that inhabited lived and behaved.

During Huck's adventure down The Mississippi with Jim, he begins to realize that he can think for himself and make rational decisions. His friendship with Jim is a big part in his moral growth throughout the novel. The epiphany he has when he decides not to send the letter to Miss Watson was a personal triumph. Twain uses Huck's friendship with Jim to gain sympathy from his readers for not only Jim, but Huck himself. In one scenario during the float down the river, Huck has the opportunity to turn Jim in as the runaway slave he is. However, Huck realizes through a short thought process that he isn't any man's robot and that he can make decisions for himself.

(Page 98) "They went off, and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I know ed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no show - when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on, -s'pose you'd done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time".

This was a rare moment for young Huck and an huge step in his moral growth. Through Jim's dire straights, Huck develops a different thought process. Instead of doing as everyone else would do, or what he thought he was supposed to do according to everyone else, he rationally thinks for himself. In doing so, he opens up a new part of him and grows morally as a person.

Huck is young and vulnerable. Jim, even though a slave, has a family of his own which allows the reader to sympathize with him even more. Throughout their trip down the river, Jim persistently takes care of Huck. He cooks for him and does double-time look-out, and even shields Huck from the dead corpse of his father. Their friendship is what best defines the overall ideal of the story and how both are searching for their own personal freedom. Jim has been a slave his entire life.

He knows nothing more than to answer and cater to a white man's call. It is only natural for him to do these things for Huck, for it was how he was brought up in society. He doesn't know any other way. However, he is human. It's not that he can't imagine never answering to a white man or being a servant to him. He dreams of being free from slavery, and even when he is on the run and free, he still finds it in his heart to nurture young Huck.

The greatest evidence of Jim's nurturing ways towards Huck is when they discover a two-story house floating down the river. After they climb on board and discover a man in one of the rooms, Jim goes in first and realizes the man is dead. He tells Huck (page 57), "It's a dead man. Yes, indeed; naked, too. He's been shot in de back... Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face - it's gash ly".

Little did Huck know at the time, but Jim was shielding the youngster from staring his dead father in the face. There is a difference however, between Jim's actions towards his previous owner Miss Watson and his services unto Huck. Jim worked and did the things for his owner because he had no other choice. He was a slave, but it wasn't as though he ran because he was tired of serving the white lady. The only reason he ran was because he overheard her saying that he was going to be sold "down the river". Being sold down the river meant being sold into an even graver situation for a slave.

It was understood by the slaves in the book that if they were sold down the river it would be the beginning of the end for them. Slave owners in the deep south were portrayed to be mean and vicious. They were depicted to be the worse kinds to work for and in the worse kinds of conditions. In the deep south, or "down the river" as Twain referred to it as, slavery was basically hell. As loyal of a man as Jim was, even he couldn't fathom the thought of working for a slave owner in the deep south. It was an unbearable situation.

Twain's representation of slavery in the deep south according to the slaves themselves is the real fiction, whereas his rendition and adventures of how Jim stayed away from the situation by escaping could be considered fantasy fiction. Jim looked out for Huck during their expedition for different reasons. He wasn't obliged by law to serve or look after Huck. It shouldn't have mattered if the young boy was fed or if he ever slept, but it somehow did to Jim. Jim was alone in the world. He had abandoned his wife and children and he was scared.

Huck provided Jim with a friend in the world. He even told Huck that he was the best friend he had ever had. (Page 96) .".. Huck, you's the bes' fren' Jim's ever had; en you's de only fren' old Jim's got now". Jim naturally cared for Huck and it showed by the way he helped him throughout their journey. Twain's portrayal of Jim's selflessness was very real in the way that he showed how a slave was in fact very humane.

However, the circumstances in which Jim was able to show his humanity throughout the journey was a little suspect in its possession of real-life drama. As with the oftentimes hard-to-believe twists in the story, Twain also uses many extreme stereotypes throughout the plot. None is more obvious than when Huck, Jim, and their new conning duo, the King and the Duke, (Page 143) .".. was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend, ... ".

Twain introduces the stereotypical "white trash" or "redneck". Huck describes the place and people as (Page 145) "All the stores was along one street. They had white-domestic awnings in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning posts. There was empty dry-goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching - a mighty ornery lot. They gene rly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats; they call one another Bill, and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawl y, and used considerable many cuss-words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch.

What a body was hearing amongst them, all the time was - 'Gimme a chaw 'vs. tobacker, Hank. ' 'Cain't - I hain't got but one chaw left. Ask Bill. ' " Twain continues with a description of the lazy, loafing, person that does nothing but "chaw tobacker", cuss and scratch. Although the description seems exaggerated, it was probably closer to the truth than not.

Living in the South, Twain had to have known people like this, as with anyone who has lived in the South, and he described them. Although it was probably belittling to some of how he portrayed the people in the little town in "Arkansaw", it could have been described in any state in the south during those days. Did his representation stretch the truth? Probably. But was it altogether a fantastical portrayal of a fictional town and its people? Absolutely not.

Those towns and people are still found in the South to this day. While thematically the book was a testament against slavery, the way Twain presented it kept its meaning hidden deep within the lines of good fiction. He never came out and stated his personal case against slavery. Rather he showed believable images and dialogue with his words that would make you cringe to believe is was possible. To give real accounts of living in the Old South during that period while also being able to tell a riveting tale is a tough task in itself, but that's exactly what Twain does. He masterfully takes a young boy and sends him on a journey through middle America filled with adventure and, has him speak a pure American dialect, and then engulfs him with people and situations that depict the most vicious visions of how the country was towards slavery and how society allowed it to exist.

Although the encounters in the novel are unbelievable at times, its underlying message of behavior towards the subject of slavery is as real of fiction as it gets. And while they both find their individual freedom at the end of the book, the way they got there was sometimes unrealistic. However, the world in which they had to overcome to get their freedom wasn't. And it was the bridge that Twain built between the two that is remarkable.