by Elizabeth Wordsmith

Created on: August 31, 2008

The great American humorist and satirist Mark Twain took a risk when he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. First published in 1884 during Reconstruction, it was highly controversial, but for different reasons than those which make it controversial today.

This novel is the story of a thirteen year old boy who embarks on a journey ostensibly for adventure and to escape abuse. The author warns us in a notice not to find a moral in this story, but that is exactly what we do find.

The reader is first introduced to Huckleberry Finn in Twain's novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom and Huck have adventures, face dangers, outwit criminals, and find treasure in a cave, making them each very rich. We might come to expect more of the same in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Instead, we find something very different.

In this novel, Huck tells the story of his journey in his own words and the dialects of those he encounters. The journey begins with the objective of escape, but instead becomes a voyage of self discovery in which Huck's conscience is raised to the injustices of his world.
Throughout Huck's travels down the Mississippi River, he is encountered by many challenges. Most important are those which test his beliefs in what society accepts as moral. Huck's innate wisdom and love of justice will struggle with those teachings of people he has heretofore respected and considered moral guides.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn reveals many human rights issues, slavery and racism, corruption and cruelty, ignorance and superstitions, mob behavior, and hypocrisies through the eyes of the simple, unsophisticated eyes of Huck Finn.

Here is a boy who has been raised essentially without a parent. His mother is dead. His father is a drunk who is either absent or abusive. In the beginning of the novel, Huck has been taken in by the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson who are enthusiastically and vigorously trying to civilize and reform him and filling his mind with their own values, one of which accepts slavery and condemns abolitionists. Before coming under their wings, Huck was illiterate. His family owned no slaves. But his father, though illiterate, unemployed, a drunk, and a man with no redeeming qualities, still considered himself superior to slaves.
Huck is still immature and lives in a fantasy world much like Tom Sawyer who creates reenactments of various adventure novels for play. Huck allows Tom to be the leader even though he sees the folly in Tom's thinking

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