Barriers In Huck Finn

Breaking Down the Barriers

Throughout the novel, Huck Finn challenges the ideas that society has ingrained in him with his own experience. As I read this book I noted that Huck and Jim are separated by the barrier of racism but they break it down as they transform from slave and white boy to father and son. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim is humanized in the eyes of Huck as they experience a great journey together as a family. At the start of the book it is evident that racism is a huge theme. Born and raised in the pre-Civil War south, all Huckleberry Finn knows is what he has been surrounded with, which is the idea that whites are the superior race. Mark Twain speaks through the experiences of Huck and exposes the character’s

It may be difficult for me to understand the true feelings of the author but I can find meaning in Huck’s attitude. At the beginning of their journey along the Mississippi River, Huck shows that he views Jim as inferior and less than human when he says “Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me” (74). Huck’s conscience leads him to believe that Jim is in the wrong for escaping slavery, despite the fact that Huck essentially did the same thing when he escaped in search of his own freedom. Later on in the story, Huck appears to be changing. For example, Huck plays a childish prank on Jim and convinces him that the day

Jim is bound by slavery and Huck is held captive at the hands of his abusive father. While Jim must endure the grueling work of a slave, Huck is trapped in a cabin at the mercy of his aggressive alcoholic father. They both manage to escape and meet along the river, forming a partnership of survival. I saw them as equals in the aspect that the were both victims of social injustice and abuse. This relationship evolves over time to what I deem to be a father-son relationship. Huck is childish, probably due to the lack of authority in his life. Jim proves himself as a protective figure for Huck. When the house is floating along the river, Jim realizes that the dead man floating is actually Huck’s father. Jim shields the boy from the pain that seeing his deceased father would bring when Jim tells him not to look at the man’s face. While Huck does not fully grasp Jim’s intention, it is one of the methods that Twain uses to humanize Jim in the eyes of mine and other readers. Not long after, Huck recognizes Jim as the father he is. Jim is crying for his children in the middle of the night and Huck feels for him on a personal level, no longer viewing him and his family as property. The culmination of all the progress Huck has made in seeing Jim as a person with humanity happens in Chapter 31. Huck is faced with the decision to alert the widow that someone else has taken Jim as a slave or to