Huckleberry Finn is a thirteen-year-old boy who was born and lives in St. Petersburg, Missouri. He is adventurous, free-spirited, compassionate, practical, and intelligent. He likes the outdoors and he prefers to be naked. He does not enjoy being cooped up in one place and enjoys having his own freedom to do what he wants, when he wants. He is rich because of finding six thousand dollars with his best friend Tom Sawyer. He lives with the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson. Before he lived with them he had to live with and endure his father’s drunkenness and tendencies of violence. While he lived with Douglas and Watson they attempted to teach him religion and manners. For a while, Huck takes those teachings at face value and accepts them as the truth. However, …show more content…
He does this because he does not like that his son is educated which is making him think he is better than his father. They spend their days fishing and generally living a simple life. This appeals to a part of Huck and he questions how he ever learned to live like he had been with the Widow and Miss Watson. However, soon his father’s beatings became too much. One night, after his father tried to kill him, Huck decided to escape by faking his own murder. He decides that he wants to be free of the people trying to keep him confined to one thing or ideal. His main motivator in escaping is freedom. His companion, a runaway slave named Jim, is also escaping for freedom. Huck and Jim travel down the river on a raft. The raft is a symbol for freedom from civilization and slavery because they are free from the land which to them represents oppression. On this raft, Huck has many different adventures and not all of them good. He must witness the violent feud between two aristocratic families, endure the terrible river con men, and pretend to be Tom Sawyer to free Jim from Slavery. All the while he must deal with his greatest