Huckleberry Finn: he is the main character and narrator of the novel. He is an poor boy who runs away from the house of the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson, his adoptive family to be free of society and civilization. Huck is Tom Sawyer's best friend and sidekick. In the novel, Huck had many adventures with Jim, Miss Watson's slave during their journeys down the Missouri River. Together they have many adventures while they hide out and travel along the river. Huck is attentive, intelligent (despite not being formally educated), and willing to come to his own conclusions about important matters, even if these conclusions contradict society’s norms. Nevertheless, Huck is still a boy, and is influenced by others, particularly by his imaginative friend, Tom.
Widow Douglas: Town widow who tries
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Jim is superstitious and occasionally sentimental, but he is also intelligent and practical. Jim’s frequent acts of unselfishness, his longing for his family, and his friendship with both Huck and Tom demonstrate to Huck that humanity has nothing to do with race.
Tom Sawyer: Tom is Huck's best friend. He enjoys having adventures and fantastic stories. Tom is imaginative, dominating and stubborn.
Pap: Huck's abusive and alcoholic father who plots to steal his son's reward money. When he appears at the beginning of the novel, he is disgusting, has ghostlike white skin and ragged clothes. Pap is against Huck being educated and torments and beats him frequently. Pap has a lot of prejudice and represents the failure of family structures in the novel.
Miss Watson Widow Douglas's sister who tries to civilize Huck through manners and religion. She is thin, demanding, and severe.
The Duke: He is a con artist who says to be the Duke of Bridgewater and takes control of Huck and Jim's raft. He is very devious and is always scheming. He pretends to be Peter Wilks' deaf and dumb brother
Throughout all of his adventures Jim shows compassion as his most prominent trait. He makes the reader aware of his many superstitions and Jim exhibits gullibility in the sense that he Jim always assumes the other characters in the book will not take advantage of him. One incident proving that Jim acts naive occurs halfway through the novel, when the Duke first comes into the scene "By right I am a duke! Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that..." In the novel, Huck Finn, one can legitimately prove that compassion, superstitious and gullibility illustrate Jim's character perfectly.
Just as Huck does make some changes, so does Jim. At first Jim is willing to accept the “king” and the “duke.” But, after having to deal with all their schemes and the way they tie him up and are rude, Jim wishes they were gone. He tells Huck, “I doan’ mine one er two kings, but dat’s enough. Dis one’s powerful drunk, en de duke ain’ much better.” (Twain, 158.) While he didn’t mind them at first, he realizes what they are really like, and is beginning to dislike them.
This young boy’s name is Huckleberry Finn, and he is brave and yearning for adventure. He begins the story with a newly acquired fortune, but goes back to living in rags and in a barrel. Huckleberry is convinced by his best friend, Tom Sawyer, to go back to living with “The Widow” so that he can join Tom’s newly created band of robbers. The Widow Douglas is a woman who takes Huckleberry as her son and does her best to “sivilize” him: teaching him how to behave and forcing him to go to school. Huckleberry slips off and joins “The Tom Sawyer Gang” and pretends to rob people for about a month before he resigns. All this time, Huckleberry is getting used to living with the widow, even admitting that he likes it a little bit. Then, one day, his father shows up, demanding his fortune and eventually taking him to his log cabin, hidden in the woods. There Huck hunts and fishes, but is not permitted to leave. Eventually, “pap got too handy with his hick’ry” so Huck escapes down the river when his father is drunk. Huck hides on Jackson’s Island and meets Jim, The Widow’s slave. Huck learns that Jim had run away from The Widow and so they decide to help each other out. But when Huck learns of a plan to search the island, they leave down the river. Several days later, they almost run into some robbers on a wrecked steamboat and manage to escape with their loot. When Huck and Jim land on the bank
The Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, sisters who adopt Huck, have a slave by the name of Jim who, on the outside, appears to be both unintelligent and foolish, as by the impression received when Jim first speaks, “Who dah?” (Twain 6).
Huckleberry’s life is changed and influenced by Tom Sawyer, the widow, his father, Miss Watson, and Jim. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry’s best friend, is a wild imagination often caused trouble for him and others. Throughout the book, Huck questions what he is doing, and wonders if Tom would do the same. He almost always decides Tom would agree with his decisions and be on his side. When Huck’s life completely turns around, he receives thousands of dollars and a place to stay with a widow from town.
Jim’s words had a big affect on Huck, who realizes that Jim is a person, and that his feelings can be hurt.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain is the epitome of American literature discussion. After capturing a raft floating nearby, a young abused boy and an escaped slave ride down the Mississippi River making stops along the way that test the meaning of trust and friendship despite color. Though the title hints to the main character as Huck Finn, an as important personality is Tom Sawyer. The role of Tom Sawyer is to be a foil for Huck inhibiting his maturity by asking Huck to help him commit theft, his own constant need for stimulus, and his inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.
In the beginning of the novel, Huck’s life is completely controlled for him. Miss Watson is one of the main characters that influences him in such a manner. Right from the start, the reader sees Miss Watson step up and take on the role of a true guardian to Huck. She does this the only way she knows how, which
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the theme of individual identity, especially contrasted against mob mentality and assimilation, is present in almost every chapter of the novel. Throughout the novel, the characters within the story, especially Huck as the protagonist, make decisions regarding which type of mentality they will use, which then affects their relations with other characters, such as Tom Sawyer. In the book, Twain uses both Huck 's idealization of Tom and Tom, the physical being, as secondary characters to help the reader understand how Huck falls into both of these mentalities and how his identity as individual changes throughout the novel. This insight allows the reader to better understand Huck 's character by showing Huck 's response to the pressure to assimilate to mob mentality, mainly through his relationship with Tom, and development in his ability to think for himself by contrasting his behavior in Tom 's presence and absence along with the reasons this development occurs.
The relationship between Huckleberry Finn and Jim are central to Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". Huck's relationships with individual characters are unique in their own way; however, his relationship with Jim is one that is ever changing and sincere. As a poor, uneducated boy, Huck distrusts the morals and intentions of the society that treats him as an outcast and fails to protect him from abuse. The uneasiness about society, and his growing relationship with Jim, leads Huck to question many of the teachings that he has received, especially concerning race and slavery. Twain makes it evident that Huck is a young boy who comes from the lowest levels of white society. Huck's father, Pap, is a drunk who disappears for
One component of these chapters that I felt was extremely prevalent was the character development of Huck. There were multiple instances when Huck had to make certain decisions that would effect him in the long run, and with most of those decisions came a moral struggle. It seemed as if within these chapters, Huck is trying to find out who he truly is as a person. One example of these moments is in chapter 16 when he is having an internal battle, trying to convince himself that helping Jim gain his freedom is in fact the right thing to do. The quote reads, “I couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't stay still in one place…I tried to make out to myself that I warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner” (Pg. 87). In the quote stated above you can clearly see the internal struggle that Huck goes through, trying to find himself along the way. He looks at the situation with 2 different perspectives, one of them being that taking Jim to gain his freedom is immoral and the wrong thing to do, the other being taking Jim to gain his freedom is the right thing to do. Although Jim knows that either way he will feel guilty but he ends up choosing to take Jim's side because of his loyalty. Jim shows his appreciation to Huck by saying things like, "Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim”(Pg. 92), causing Huck
than a friend but more like a relationship between a son and his father. When Huck and Jim
Huckleberry, or Huck, is the main, round character in the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Throughout the story, Huck is confronted with many conflicts and many different situations which mold and shape him into the character that he becomes later in the story. You can see the changes in Huck’s character through the way his morals change, as well as his relationships with those around him. Huck transforms into a whole new person by the end of the book.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the sequel to Tom Sawyer, is considered Twain's masterpiece. The book is the story of the title character, known as Huck, a boy who flees his father by rafting down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave, Jim. The pair's adventures show Huck (and the reader) the cruelty of which men and women are capable. Another theme of the novel is the conflict between Huck's feelings of friendship with Jim, who is one of the
Tom and Huck are happy and rich and they promise to always stay together. The main character of the book is Tom Sawyer. Tom is an imaginative young man. Whenever Tom plays he pretends to be a pirate or Robin Hood and his friends would be his merry men.