Lighting Out for the Territory in "Huckleberry Finn"
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- Date Submitted: 11/16/2010 12:32 AM
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Huckberry Finn: A Young Boy’s Quest For a New Identity
In Mark Twain’s controversial novel, Adventures of Huckberry Finn, Huck Finn is a young boy who decides to flee from his life in St. Petersburg, Missouri by way of the Mississippi River, leaving behind his abusive father, Pap, and the Window Douglas and Miss Watson, who have taken him in with hopes of civilizing him. After a frightening night during which a drunken Pap attacks Huck, he devises a plan to escape. He fakes his murder and high-tails it out of Missouri on a raft that he had found, leaving behind everything that he knows, with high hopes of escaping his identity and the smothering constraints of society. Huck unexpectedly teams up with the runaway slave, Jim, and on their quest for freedom and new identities, Huck learns how to be a friend, how to love, how to think for himself, and successfully break away from life as he once knew it.
On his journey, Huck is a man of many disguises. George Jackson, Sarah Williams, and even, Tom Sawyer, are just a few of those different aliases that he goes by. This shows Huck’s transformation on the river. He can’t go by Huckleberry Finn when he is on land and forced to encounter people that conduct their lives as respectable members of society because he no longer considers himself to be one. Also, whenever Huck goes “undercover” he is often nervous, and forced to create elaborate lies, however, when he finally able to get back to the river, he feels a great sense of relief. The river is what he considers home, it’s where he feels safe and he can be honest with himself. For example, after living with the Grangerfords for a short amount of time, their on-going feud with the Shepherdsons shifts into high gear, but Huck manages to escape with Jim back to the Mississippi River. Huck says, “I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seems so cramped...
In Mark Twain’s controversial novel, Adventures of Huckberry Finn, Huck Finn is a young boy who decides to flee from his life in St. Petersburg, Missouri by way of the Mississippi River, leaving behind his abusive father, Pap, and the Window Douglas and Miss Watson, who have taken him in with hopes of civilizing him. After a frightening night during which a drunken Pap attacks Huck, he devises a plan to escape. He fakes his murder and high-tails it out of Missouri on a raft that he had found, leaving behind everything that he knows, with high hopes of escaping his identity and the smothering constraints of society. Huck unexpectedly teams up with the runaway slave, Jim, and on their quest for freedom and new identities, Huck learns how to be a friend, how to love, how to think for himself, and successfully break away from life as he once knew it.
On his journey, Huck is a man of many disguises. George Jackson, Sarah Williams, and even, Tom Sawyer, are just a few of those different aliases that he goes by. This shows Huck’s transformation on the river. He can’t go by Huckleberry Finn when he is on land and forced to encounter people that conduct their lives as respectable members of society because he no longer considers himself to be one. Also, whenever Huck goes “undercover” he is often nervous, and forced to create elaborate lies, however, when he finally able to get back to the river, he feels a great sense of relief. The river is what he considers home, it’s where he feels safe and he can be honest with himself. For example, after living with the Grangerfords for a short amount of time, their on-going feud with the Shepherdsons shifts into high gear, but Huck manages to escape with Jim back to the Mississippi River. Huck says, “I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seems so cramped...