Huckleberry Finn

We don’t envy Huck Finn. To begin, the boy’s got about ten systems of conflicting rules he’s trying to sort out. He has to decide to what and whom he feels loyal: follow religion, or follow his gut instincts? Obey his father, or obey the Widow? Listen to Tom, or to the Phelpses? With all this conflict, Huck has to sort his way through what he thinks is right, which is hardly easy when you’re a young boy caught up in some pretty weighty moral issues.

What’s appealing about his character is that he approaches these conflicts so earnestly. Check out the scene where Huck decides to apologize to Jim even though he’s a black man, or that moment in Chapter 31 when Huck debates whether or not to turn Jim in and explain everything to Miss Watson. On the one hand, all the rules he’s been raised by tell him he can’t free a slave. No matter how he feels about Jim as a friend, he really does believe he’ll go to hell if he helps Jim out. Because of this belief, it reflects an incredibly strong personal character when Huck defiantly declares that, damn his conscience, he’ll just go to hell and that’s that.

Despite these moments of intense personal scrutiny, Huck definitely struggles with his own sense of identity. In the beginning of the novel, he oscillates between his comfort living in the woods and his realization that, actually, gettin’ civilized ain’t so bad. He seems to make his living on the river out of pretending to be other people, and he certainly displays a penchant for telling lies all the time. And look at his constant comments about Tom Sawyer while he’s on his journey; he repeatedly expresses a desire to be like Tom, wonders how Tom would act, hopes he’s doing as good of a job as Tom would, etc. Of course, at the end of the novel, Huck is literally pretending to be Tom – he’s acting out what was otherwise a more subtle hero-complex. So why does he want to be so much like Tom? Does he succeed? Does he change his mind when he sees how Tom acts? Run with it.