Huckleberry Finn Transformation

The adventure of Huckleberry Finn carries a title that easily leads up to an assumption of Huckleberry Finn (or Huck) being the hero of the journey. Convincingly, the novel is told through the boy’s perspective, with its focus placed on the maturation and the detachment from “civilization” of Huck. However it could be argued that as the story progresses, the character named Jim gradually grows from a normal black old man into a significant symbol of racism, a wanted fugitive, a prey of the “justified” society, and a company of Huck. The major role of Jim causes readers to reconsider the identification of the true protagonist in this plot, and although Huck’s character development seems to outshine the personal growth of Jim, the transformation

The “ole” Jim has been associated with the term of “runaway nigger”, whose sole purpose is to regain the freedom, despite the safety of Huck Finn; and along with that is a respect “as if he was a wonder” (24) for his magical stories from naive audiences. Evidences found in the novel have shown how Jim takes advantage of the others’ gullibility using his superstition and partly, age. For instance, how Jim would fool fellows to “give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that fiver-center piece” (which Jim claims “the devil had had his hands on it” (25)), or the way Jim tricked Huck into the prophetic hairball by telling him “it wouldn’t talk without money” (42). And the most important lie Jim has ever made to Huck was to prevent the boy from encountering his dead Pap, the mere reason Huck joins the adventure, pushing Huck into countless troubles that possibly would endanger such a young child, in exchange for a freedom that he has already owned. Eventually, all the selfishness is converted into selflessness in the moment Jim sacrifices his freedom in order to save Tom Sawyer’s life; the freedom that Jim seeks in hope for a reunion with “his wife and children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life” (268). Jim succumbs to slavery for a child that is “torturing” him in exchange for an

Jim is a notable figure of determination, of morals, of compassion, who strives to the end in order to survive and regain his rights in a world where “men like him” are considered as property. Indeed Huckleberry bears no guilt or responsibility, and he is just yet another early victim of the corrupted civilization, but saved by Jim throughout the journey. Despite how “The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn” revolves around Huck’s coming of age, the character Jim is the driven force that instigates the personal development of the boy and the start of a world-classic