Freedom In Mark Twain's Through Huckleberry Finn

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Wayne Dyer once said, “Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.” Freedom is a big thing in every society and culture there isn’t a single person that feels absolutely free of everything, authors like to show their discontentment for this feeling in their writing. Mark Twain is one of those authors, in his novel, Huckleberry Finn the theme of freedom can be seen throughout. This novel is about a young boy, Huck who is about twelve years old and a slave named, Jim who through the course of the book becomes Huck’s best friend and father figure. In this novel Huck and Jim struggle to gain freedom. Huck wants to be free from the chains of society and Jim wants to escape the ropes of …show more content…

Huck struggles to see the good in society because everyone he has ever lived with has not seen his great potential, he wants to be free of societal pressures which proves to be a hard task. Jim on the other hand is not a free man he is a slave, therefore freedom is very important to him. He has been a slave for many years and gaining his freedom will prove that he is a person and deserves to be treated like one. According to Huck, “...whoever saved [Jim] would send him back home so as to get a reward, then Miss Watson would sell him [for] sure.” Huck is beginning to realize that Jim is a human being and things that society has told him might be wrong. He is pulling more and more away from society’s beliefs and gaining a little bit of freedom each time. Jim is also gaining a bit of freedom when Huck treats him like a person, he can now act like himself, not a slave and can say and do things freely around Huck. Although this is the first time that Jim experiences a sliver of freedom in the novel, Huck has felt this way before. Huck had experienced all kinds of abuse from his father, Pap and when he escapes from his cold hearted grasp he feels free, like his own person for once. He states, “... I ain’t [going] back there…” in this moment he is breaking away from society, he is going to live in a canoe on a river with a slave away from any parents or guardians which is everything