Huck As An Individualist

In the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, thirteen year old Huckleberry is a self-concerned, immature, naive boy who is conflicted with his own internal beliefs and the beliefs of the society he lives in. After escaping the civilized life he’s known, Huck faces many difficult situations on his journey, where he finally decides to follow his heart in making the decision to rescue a true friend, Jim, a runaway slave, although this may have others seeing him as a “dirty abolitionist”. In the end, Huck learns that society is not always correct in their ways. Huckleberry is taken in by a woman named widow Douglas and her ornery older sister Miss Watson and although they mean well, Huck sees it as suffocation, he …show more content…
Tom is a rambunctious, adventurous, daydreamer with a substantial imagination. While Huck sits and sulks in his bedroom, he hears a commotion outside; “pretty soon, I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees - something was a stirring…” (Twain 4). Huck jumps out of bed, and goes to the window, he says, “then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me” (Twain 4). Huck and Tom start making their way off of the widow’s property when Huck trips alerting Jim from inside the house. Jim calls out, “say who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n. Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do: I’s gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it ag’in” (Twain 5). While Jim sits, waiting to hear the boys again, he falls asleep, and Tom Sawyer’s rowdy attitude kicks in, while they sneak by a snoring Jim, he tells Huck, he wants to “tie Jim to the tree for fun” (Twain 5). Huck declines. When they finally escape the yard, the boys meet up with other friends where Tom announces his far fetched plans to start a gang, he says, “we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood” (Twain 7). The boys decide that they will kill the families of the members who tell any of the gang’s secrets, and as one boy points …show more content…
Huck says “After all this long journey, and after all we’d done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again… amongst strangers…” (Twain 212). Huck becomes enraged at the fact that the men would even do such a thing to Jim. Huck starts to feel his social morals ride on him when he thinks about how he had wronged the Widow; “I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm…” (Twain 212). Huck decides that the only proper choice is to write a letter and to see how he feels. After writing the letter, Huck says, “I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life…” (Twain 213). As Huck continues on to say a prayer, he feels overwhelmed with emotion and takes a moment to listen to his heart. He says, “But somehow, I couldn’t strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind... I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now…” (Twain 214). After reminiscing over all of his memories of Jim, Huck realizes that he is the only one who can help him. Huck chooses his heart over society because he knows that Jim is not much different than any other individual. Jim is the only positive