Huckleberry Finn Literary Analysis

Literary devices can help a reader further understand a major theme of a novel. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about a boy named Huck who goes on a journey down the Mississippi River with Jim, a runaway slave. As they travel down, they encounter challenges that will trouble Huck’s conscience. One of the major themes of this novel is “coming of age” or growing up. Through his use of plot and characterization, Twain shows how Huck matures throughout the novel. Twain uses plot to show how much Huck has grown up. While going down the river, he faced many challenges. When he and Jim were caught in a situation, he would lie to get out of it. When he heard that the king and duke were going to steal money from the Wilks’, he went to find the money and hid it from them so that they would be shown as frauds. He also tried to help Mary Jane by telling her the truth and where he hid the money because he saw her crying and felt bad for her. Deciding to tell her the truth and help her was very mature of him to do when he could have just left with Jim. When Huck and Tom were trying to rescue Jim, Huck was being serious about trying to free Jim. But Tom thought of this as just as an adventure, even though he knew Jim was free this whole time. The differences between them show how …show more content…
The neighborhood Huck grew up in greatly influenced his views on slaves. But when Jim was taking his watch at night, Huck heard him crying and moaning for his wife and 2 children. Huck said that this doesn’t seem normal because he was told that slaves did not have feelings. But seeing Jim made him realize that “he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n” (Twain 155). When the king and duke pretend to be the brothers of Peter Wilks, Huck is “ashamed of the human race” (Twain 162). He is seeing how horrible the king and duke are by deceiving a family, who just lost a family member, to get money for