Huckleberry Finn

Characterization

Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is the son of the town's vagrant drunkard, "Pap" Finn. Sleeping on doorsteps when the weather is fair, in empty hogsheads during storms, and living off of what he receives from others, Huck lives the life of a destitute vagabond. The author metaphorically names him "the juvenile pariah of the village" and describes Huck as "idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad," qualities for which he was admired by all the children in the village, although their mothers "cordially hated and dreaded" him.

Huck is an archetypal innocent, able to discover the "right" thing to do despite the prevailing theology and prejudiced mentality of the South of that era. The best example of this is his decision to help Jim escape slavery, even though he believes he will go to hell for it (see Christian views on slavery).

His appearance is described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wears the clothes of full-grown men which he probably received as charity, and as Twain describes him, "he was fluttering with rags." He has a torn broken hat and his trousers are supported with only one suspender.

Tom's Aunt Polly calls Huck a "poor motherless thing." Huck confesses to Tom in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that he remembers his mother and his parents' relentless fighting that only abated with her death.

Huck has a carefree life free from societal norms or rules, stealing watermelons and chickens and "borrowing" boats and cigars. Due to his unconventional childhood, Huck has received almost no education. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglas, who sends him to school in return for his saving her life. In the course of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn he learns enough to be literate and even reads books for entertainment when there isn't anything else to do. His knowledge of history as related to Jim is wildly inaccurate, but it is not specified if he is being wrong on purpose as a joke on Jim.

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Widow attempts to "sivilize" (sic) the newly wealthy Huck. Huck's father takes him from her, but Huck manages to fake his own death and escape to Jackson's Island, where he coincidentally meets up with Jim, a slave who was owned by the Widow Douglas' sister, Miss Watson.

Jim is running away because he overheard Miss Watson planning to "sell him South" for eight hundred dollars. Jim wants to escape to Ohio, where he can find work to eventually buy his family's freedom. Huck and Jim take a raft down the Mississippi River in hopes of finding freedom from slavery for Jim and freedom from Pap for Huck. Their adventures together, along with Huck's solo adventures, comprise the core of the book.

In the end, however, Jim gains his freedom through Miss Watson's death, as she freed him in her will. Pap, it is revealed, has died in Huck's absence, and although he could safely return to St. Petersburg, Huck plans to flee west to Indian Territory.

In Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, the sequels to Huck Finn, however, Huck is living in St. Petersburg again after the events of his eponymous novel. In Abroad, Huck joins Tom and Jim for a wild, fanciful balloon ride that takes them overseas. In Detective, which occurs about a year after the events of Huck Finn, Huck helps Tom solve a murder mystery.

Relationships

Huck is Tom Sawyer's closest friend. Their friendship is partially rooted in Sawyer's emulation of Huck's freedom and ability to do what he wants, like swearing and smoking when he feels like it. In one moment in the novel, he openly brags to his teacher that he was late for school because he stopped to talk with Huck Finn and enjoyed it, something for which he knew he would (and did) receive a whipping. Nonetheless, Tom remains a devoted friend to Huck in all of the novels they appear in. In Huckleberry Finn, it's revealed that Huck also considers Tom to be his best friend. At various times in the novel, Huck mentions that Tom would put more "style" in Jim and his adventure.

Jim, a runaway slave whom Huck befriends, is another dominant force in Huck's life. He is the symbol for the moral awakening Huck undergoes throughout Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is seen when Huck considers sending a letter to Ms. Watson telling her where Jim is but ultimately chooses to rip it up despite the idea in the south that one who tries helping a slave escape will be sent to eternal punishment.

Pap Finn is Huck's abusive, drunken father who shows up at the beginning of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and forcibly takes his son to live with him. Pap's only method of parenting is physical abuse. Although he seems derisive of education and civilized living, Pap seems to be jealous of Huck and is infuriated that his son would try to amount to more, and live in better conditions than he did. Despite this early in the novel, Huck uses his father's method of "borrowing" though he later feels sorry and stops.

Inspiration

The character of Huck Finn is based on Tom Blankenship, the real-life son of a sawmill laborer and sometime drunkard named Woodson Blankenship, who lived in a "ramshackle" house near the Mississippi River behind the house where the author grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. The father of Huck, called "Pap" Finn, may be based on Jimmy Finn, a full-blown alcoholic who lived on the streets, and it is only through Twain's remembrances that Woodson is characterized as a drunkard. Twain left Hannibal and his boyhood at an early age and his memories of these people are colored by what he could have known and understood at the time, as a boy of less than 14 years old. Twain's friend Tom Blankenship didn't attend school because there were no public schools at the time, and his family was too poor to send him to a private school. Left at loose ends in a busy household with six sisters and lacking a mother who seems to have died when he was young, this Tom was indeed "at liberty" most of the time.

Twain mentions his childhood friend Tom Blankenship as the inspiration for creating Huckleberry Finn in his autobiography: "In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's." – Mark Twain's Autobiography.

Appearances

Since Mark Twain's death, Huck Finn has also appeared in a number of novels, plays, and stories written by various authors that purport to tell the latter adventures of Huck and his friends.

Portrayals

Actors who have portrayed Huckleberry Finn in movies and TV: