Examples Of Prejudice In Huckleberry Finn

Bob Marley once said, “Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere about.” In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, two runaway meet up on the raft to escape to the free state. Huck, one of the runaways is white, running away from abuse from his father. The other runaway, Jim, is a slave that is escaping being sold. Huck’s prejudice was strong to Jim, but as life goes on, he start to realize the importance of each other relationship through turbulent times and relaxed times. Experiencing the turbulent lessons of life washes away preconception and prejudice and leaves in its path understanding and even friendship.
Huck’s turbulent life lessons wash away preconception

He goes against what life has taught him because this turbulent time nearly costed him his life when Jim suggested to leave the boat alone. Now with that turbulent and scary experience in his mind, that old prejudice view of Jim has washed away, and now causes him to think of him as level headed. The Grangerford’s are another example of preconception being washed away. Huck crashes on to the shore, and gets noticed by the Grangerford’s. The Grangerford’s shelter him and as he looks around the house, he sees all the expensive things they have and believes that these people could not possibly have any problems with all this money. This not true sadly, as they are in a feud with another family that share a dock with them. This feud has been going on for 30 years and no one knows what is about. They carry their guns around town, on the off chance they need to shoot someone. When he sees his newly found friend named Buck get killed, he is horrified and becomes sick because of it, and is found saying, “I wish I ain’t come ashore that night, to see such things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them--lots of times I dream about them” (Twain 137). Huck found out tragically that elegancy does not mean perfection.

Huck would have never thought he would be friends with a slave and even recognize a slave as a friend. When Jim gets captured, Huck is so sad he cries about losing him. Finding out where he is, he thinks that the easiest way to get Jim back was if Ms Watson bought him out again. So he decides to write a letter to her. As he thinks more about it, he says that it would just be returning him to his old life, and does he really want to go back to be sold? To send the letter, he tries to find a time where Jim has done bad to him, but he simply can’t; “I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we-a floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him” (Twain 242). The things he would do with Tom, talk, sing, and laugh, were the same things he would do with Jim. When Jim gets caught, he thinks about all those good times with Jim. Friends can’t think of all the bad things they had done if they did any, and Jim didn’t do anything Huck could remember. That is a true friendship, and as Huck thinks this, he does realize that Jim is a friend. This friendship defies social norms, for it being a white and black friendship. They value each other equally, and the turbulent times of Jim not being with Huck, finally gets Huck to realize that Jim is his true friend. Huck then comes