Moral Development In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Raine Guidarelli

Mrs. Radbill

AP Eng Lang & Comp

7 April 2023

Jim’s Influence on Huck’s Moral Development in Huck Finn A bildungsroman is a literary genre that is centered on the protagonist’s moral and psychological change as they mature throughout the novel. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a perfect example of this genre as it follows Huck’s abandonment of standard 1800s treatment of people of color while trying to free his friend, Jim, from slavery. Throughout the novel, Huck Finn, Twain uses Huck's relationship with Jim as a catalyst for Huck’s moral development as he rejects the societal norms of his upbringing. To begin, Twain demonstrates Jim’s effect on Huck’s maturity by allowing Huck to empathize with Jim’s emotions.

Throughout the novel, you can track Jim and Huck’s growing relationship, from just being co-fugitives to Huck being “de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had, en… de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now”(89). At the moment Jim said this, Huck was planning to turn Jim in back to enslavement; however, Jim’s touching words “took the tuck all out of [Huck]”(89) and he ended up once again keeping Jim’s secret. Twain permits Huck to realize that Jim doesn’t merely hold value as a human, but also as a friend. This is also shown when keeping watch on the raft, Huck “goes to sleep and Jim didn’t call [Huck] when it was [his] turn. [Jim] often done that”(155). Twain exhibits Huck beginning to appreciate Jim as a friend as a result of their shared struggles on the raft. This is most apparent when Huck decides to “go to hell”(214) in order to save Jim after remembering how he’d “do everything he could think of for [Huck], and how good he always was”(213). Jim and Huck’s relationship culminates in this final moment, where Huck appreciates Jim as his best friend and decides to go to Hell in order to save his life. This scene is very similar to earlier in the novel when Huck decides to go to Hell because “Tom Sawyer would go there”(3). This juxtaposition between Tom Sawyer and Jim, a wealthy white boy and a black slave, serves to emphasize how much respect

Huck is aware of Jim’s role as the head of a family, and comes to understand that Jim “cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so”(155). Huck’s prejudices still exist, but as he comes to get to know Jim’s family (such as Jim’s “deaf en dumb”(156) daughter), they slowly lose their hold on Huck’s moral principles. Moreover, in multiple instances throughout the story, Jim acts as Huck’s surrogate father. When Jim stumbles upon the corpse of Huck’s father, he tells Huck “doan’ look at his face”(50). Jim protecting Huck from the sight of his dead dad is both a fatherly thing to do and a metaphor for Jim being passed the mantle of fatherhood from Pap, a terrible father figure. Twain allows Huck to see Jim not only as a father and husband, but his father as well, which is tremendous growth in a society where interracial families were practically unheard of and not looked kindly