Huckleberry Finn Maturity

Some young children grow up fast and others grow slowly. If a child grows in a hard situation or is constantly exposed to tragic accidents or hard, life-changing decisions they will mature much faster than normal. They end up losing their childhood innocence much too fast. Their decisions in matters of the heart and head reflect this. In Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, a young boy struggle with conflict between his head and heart which accelerates him into maturity before his time. From the very beginning Huck has had a hard life. He grew up with an abusive, alcoholic, father called Pap. Pap constantly abandoned Huck and gave no thought to Huck’s welfare. Because of this, Huck had to learn to be tough from a very young age. He learned many hard lessons from living by himself but just as many as when living with Pap. One of which he tells about by saying, “If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, …show more content…
Ironically, some of the actions he feels the most regret for are not even his own actions. When the King and the Duke attempt to steal the money from the poor, orphaned, lovely girls, Huck begins feeling uncomfortable about this theft in particular. He feels “so ornery and low down and mean.” So awful in fact, that for once in his life, Huck takes action. Huck actually does something daring because he chose to, and not Tom Sawyer. Normally Huck would care less about stealing; he did it all the time. The only other time he ever showed any remorse was when the fact that he was stealing a slave slapped him across the face. He was in a great deal of turmoil for that but yet not enough to do anything about it. However by finally manning up enough to attempt to change the outcome of the Duke and the King’s theft, he shows maturity; which is then reversed when he feels absolutely nothing for stealing a watermelon. So Huck does grow and mature but he suffers from occasional