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Huckleberry Finn Character Traits

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The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, follows a young teenager who finds himself on an adventure to free a slave. Ernest Hemingway said that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was basis for all American Literature. The character of Huck has always been regarded as particularly American, and many American literary characters seem to have descended from Huck. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- his troubled family background, Huck embodies certain American characteristics. The most important of these are hard-working, independent,understanding, and many more. Huckleberry Finn is a young teenager quickly thrown in a dangerous situation with a runaway slave, con men, stolen money, family feuds, and many other grueling tasks. …show more content…

He does not need anybody to live. Huck lived by himself for almost his whole life. His father, being the town drunk, was hardly ever home. Huck sometimes just assumed he had died. Once he was taken in by the widow, Huck realizes that he likes living by himself. Huck tries to adapt to a proper lifestyle with religion and education, but it does not feel right to him. It was almost a good thing when his father brings him to the shack. Huck expressed this when he said: “Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more.” (p.36) Although Huck describes the proper lifestyle as being tedious, he also does not like the life locked up in a shack. He has a taste for the independent life and he craves it. That is the reason he left, he wants to be on his own without any rules. For the rest of the journey, Huck likes it better when he can be independent. Independence in an American characteristic that means a lot to the country. They want to be free of any restrictions that stop them from being themselves. It makes them proud to be independent, and Huck embodies

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