Religion In Huckleberry Finn

There is an ever growing controversy in the novel in regards of religion. Right in the beginning of the Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, Miss Watson is telling Huck all about "the bad place (Hell)" and how "she was going to live so as to go to the good place (Heaven)" Huck then states, "I couldn 't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn 't try for it”and that he would join Tom Sawyer in Hell (3). Huckleberry Finn, a thirteen-year-old boy living in Missouri and the son of an abusive drunkard, has never been educated about religion and is confined by society misleading ways is exposed to the reality of religion as he encompasses various people that are the perceived as ideal white folks during the time period.

Though Huck Finn was not a religious individual, he was still able to make good decisions with the morals he developed through his journey. For example, when Huck and Jim came across a wrecked ship boarded with robbers, Huck could’ve escaped away and left the robbers to die but Huck’s morality development steps in and decided that he can not be a murder himself. He instead goes to shore and sends the ferry watchmen to check out the wreck since he believes that “it ain’t good sense (and) it ain’t good morals” to leave the robbers on the wrecked boat and let them drown to their deaths (69). This clearly shows that without religion, Huck was still able to understand the value of a life. That even though the robbers were criminals, leaving them behind to die would make him no better than murders. Huck Finn was able to make ethical choices through his conscience instead of through God’s guide. Another example of making moral decisions without religion is shown through Jim’s actions. Jim ,an uneducated runaway slave, relies on his superstitions rather than religion to make judgements. When Huck and Jim came across a flooded house with a dead man laying on the floor, Jim was quick to “throw some old rags over him to prevent Huck from seeing the “gashly” looking dead man (50). At the end of the novel, it was revealed that the dead man in the flooded house was actually Huck’s dad. Jim a non religious slave, was able to make a humane decision to protect Huck from facing the gruesome imagine of his dead father. It has been shown in the book that both Huck and Jim were able to make wise decisions based on experience and their morals rather than rely on religion. This displays Twain’s message that religion does not solely decide if a person is good or bad. A person is decided if they’re virtuous or not through their good deeds that they make throughout