Heroism In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

(89-90).

A picaresque novel, such as The Adventures of Huck Finn, can be defined as a genre of fiction that depicts the adventures of an uncivilized and disreputable, albeit heroic character, portrayed in an episodic form. In Mark Twain’s novel the protagonist Huckleberry Finn, constantly found himself drifting into perilous situations. However, Twain uses the symbolism of both the flowing waters of the Mississippi River, as well as the stationary, treacherous Southern shoreline, to contrast the difference between the episodes of relative calm and calamity. Huck and his friend/ex-slave Jim, “run nights, and laid up and hid day-times; soon as night was most gone, we… cut young cotton-woods and willows and hid the raft with them” (Twain, 88).

The river represented for them, safety, freedom, progress, and most importantly, escape from “sivilized” society. Conversely, when daylight began to break, once visible, through the sky, Huck and Jim had to race, in fear, to the shoreline to quickly find a hiding place so they would not be caught. Unlike the advancing and purifying river, the immobile shore represented danger, stagnation, and the influences of an evil society. Twain creates in the characters of Huck and Jim, two thoroughly uncultivated people living off the land on the river and in the brush. Both characters are disreputable, as well, in the eyes of Southern society; Huck is disreputable for helping a slave escape, and Jim is disreputable for running away from his owner. What makes both of these characters disreputable, however, is also what makes them heroic, due to the risks eac of them takes in pursuit

Dissimilarly, Jim had escaped from a brutal life spent as mere property, in the inhumane and repugnant circumstances endured by Southern slaves. Being caught by a townsman would mean certain danger for the pair. As Jim was a fugitive and Huck was presumed “dead,” their liberty from what Twain feels was an unacceptable society, would be at risk. Huck narrated, “a scow or a raft went so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing… but we couldn’t see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly.” In this quote, Huck expressed, through his poor grammar, his lack of education, an important feature for the society from which Huck was escaping. However, Huck made it very clear that the fear and “crawliness” he was physically feeling was human nature. In the past, both Huck and Jim were oppressed by, and under the control of, different members of an objectionable society; Huck was held captive by both his father, as well as the widow, and Jim was quite literally, enslaved by Ms. Watson. Both Huck and Jim were rebelling