Picaresque Structure In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn Analysis

Decent Essays
A Picaresque Setting

The picaresque structure of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a main focus of the story, and it makes this book what it is. Twain set this novel on the Mississippi River, which is used as a picaresque device. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses the setting on the Mississippi River to develop and contribute to the novel’s picaresque structure through the river physically taking Huck and Jim from episode to episode, providing obstacles to mirror Huck’s roguishness, and by using the river to satirize social classes and the people in the South. The Mississippi River is Huck and Jim’s source of transportation in the novel, and therefore physically takes them from each episode to the next. Without the river,
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Huck and Jim use a raft in order to travel on the river, but, one night, the fog on the river is so thick that Huck decides it will be better if he paddles ahead of the raft in their canoe. A problem arises, though, because “there was a stiff current” (96) in the river, which separates Huck and Jim. The two cannot find each other for the night, and causes Jim to be terribly worried. A short time after this, the river presents another problem for Huck and Jim. One day, while on the raft, a steamboat comes and smashes “straight through the raft” (111). Without anything to use for travel, Huck and Jim are left to figure out a way around this obstacle that a steamboat on the Mississippi has caused them. As the story moves forward and Huck and Jim attempt to get away from the king and duke, the Mississippi makes this “escape” possible. But, the Mississippi makes it possible for the two conmen to “[bust] out over the water” (239) and catch up with Huck and Jim, and so the four are again together, another hurdle that the river provides for Huck and Jim. Through these obstacles that Huck and Jim encounter on the river, Twain displays that the river is mischievous, just as the hero in a picaresque novel

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