Deception In Huckleberry Finn Analysis

In the essay Patterns of Deception in Huckleberry Finn, Allingham argues that the “Characters slip in and out of their identity by wearing deliberate disguises”, causing many patterns of deception throughout the whole book (Allingham 447). While I do find this to be somewhat true in the context of Huck always pretending to be something he is not and following Tom Sawyer, this argument does not address how Huck uses these “deceptions” he creates throughout the whole book to show who he really is and how he grows from a boy with no care to a more wiser version of himself. In the course of this essay I will argue that even though Huck does use many different deceptions of his character throughout the book, it is not meant to sway the look of …show more content…
Allingham talked about that fact that, “deception is viewed under three heads: a deliberate misleading of the reader by the author through the narrator; a fraud perpetrated or a practical joke played by one character upon another; and a characters deceiving himself” (Allingham 449). When he said “a fraud perpetrated or a practical joke” it reminded me of the experience Huck and Jim had in the cave. It plays a huge part, but very small detail in the story, of Huck growing up and realizing that playing jokes isn’t always a good thing to do in certain situations. Huck tries to play a practical joke on Jim by placing a dead rattlesnake underneath his blanket, hoping to give him a little scare when he returned. Little did he know that the rattlesnake's mate would come biting Jim in the foot and causing him to be in severe pain. Acting upon his early instincts, Huck then played the whole thing off like he had not done it and did not ever admit to putting the rattlesnake there in the first place. This was a significant place in the book because even though Huck had not done the right thing and admitted to what he had done, he was starting to realize what …show more content…
Allingham does note all the uses of deceptions in the book that create a sense of lying and childishness, but he also needs to note how much the deceptions used in the book created the good person Huck ended up being. In my opinion, Twain was not trying to deceive the readers but show them how the young boy-like nature influenced him in his wrong doing and ended up proving a point that Huck was indeed growing up and changing the interpretation of himself over time. He no longer wanted to play jokes on people because he could see how lying and hurting someone was not as fun as it had seemed before and he did not want to lose Jim to an injury, especially one he had caused. As he develops more he realizes that lying is bad but there are times a white lie is needed to protect people he cares about. This is truly when you begin to see Huck develop moral reasoning when instead of lying to cover up what he had done, he began to lie to cover up for Jim. His view on society and the idea of slavery was slowly changing and he now thought of Jim as more of a person than property. He realized Jim also had a family he cared about and reasons to do what he did. Without the use of deceptions created by Huck, Jim, the King and the Duke in this book we would not be able to fully