Huck Finn's Quest

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Huck Finn is the narrator of the novel, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, by Mark Twain. “In the late nineteenth century, the word [huckleberry] referred to an utterly insignificant person or event” (Mintz 1). Huck was an average teenage boy, but belonged to a lower class making him viewed as insignificant. This is why he explains his quest to freedom. The structure of the novel takes that of a journey as he explains the many adventures and explorations he experienced, that were seemingly insignificant to anyone else, but in reality, he was desperately searching for his freedom while rising above the racial prejudices of his society. He expresses the events very smoothly, easily moving on from one to the next showing his childlike mind while…show more content…
Jim escaped slavery to prevent from being sold down to New Orleans as he would be separated from his wife and children. “But Jim is chasing a more concrete ideal of freedom than Huck is” (Gale 2). Jim is attempting to find freedom to escape being sold as property while Huck wants the freedom to make his own decisions. Jim expresses that “it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom” (Twain 66). Jim’s quest for freedom soon changed into a concentration on survival after there were attempts for his capture. While Huck was already free on his journey to freedom, Jim had to put his on hold and focus on staying hidden out of fear of being…show more content…
“The novel’s overarching theme is how young Huck has internalized his society’s racial prejudice yet it able, at times, to rise above it” (Mintz 2). Huck uses the same words to refer to the slaves as everyone else does because it is all he knows, “Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door” (Twain 3). But on the contrary, Huck rises above the prejudicial ways of his society in claiming that he would go to hell to help Jim get to freedom. Huck risks his safety, his life, and the morals he learned from the widow to aide in protecting Jim and help him gain his freedom. Huck also apologizes to Jim for everything he and others like him has caused, “I done it and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards” (Twain 65). Huck is able to look past what he has learned from his society and see the content of Jim’s character and understand that he is worthy of care and
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    Huckleberry Finn’s Quest The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is in fact not a tale of adventure; it is a story of a quest taken by a young boy in Pre Civil War time. It is shown that it is a quest because it has the five things that Thomas C. Foster says the story has to have in order for it to be a quest. It has a quester, a place to go, a clear reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and lastly a real reason to go on the quest. Just by reading the first page of the

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