Loss Of Innocence In Huckleberry Finn

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In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the main character, Huckleberry Finn, or Huck for short, was around the age of thirteen years old. To put Huck’s age into a modern day perspective, Huck would have been in about seventh grade so he still had a lot of growing up to do. Around the age of thirteen is when children, especially boys, are typically still very ignorant and naïve in many ways and that showed through Huck’s character. His ignorance was not a bad thing, but just a result from his youthful innocence. Throughout the novel we see Huck slowly growing up as his views transgress the social norms of the South as he goes through three stages: naivety, skepticism, and eventually understanding. This is shown through his relationship…show more content…
Huck was still at an age where he didn’t entirely understand racism and slavery but he had a general understanding that Jim was still somebody’s property. Although he was never harshly discriminated against Jim or abused him like many other Southerners would, Huck still felt a sense of superiority over Jim. There were many moments earlier in the novel where Huck would mess with Jim and play pranks on him because he had picked up the idea that Jim would be dumb and foolish, which really wasn’t true. A quality going hand in hand with Huck being naïve was his immaturity. His immaturity was displayed through his actions as well as how he reacted to many situations. One of the most recognizable scenes of immaturity in the novel was when Huck put a dead rattlesnake on Jim while they were on the island. The dead snake that was placed at the end of Jim’s blanket was meant to be a funny prank (for Huck) but once an actual alive snake followed it and bit Jim, Huck decided to pretend to have nothing to do with it. Huck dealt with this by describing, “I slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear way amongst the bushes; for I warn’t going to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it” (64). First of all, trying to scare someone with a dead snake is a very silly and childish thing to do. Secondly, the way Huck didn’t own up to his mistake because he did not want to deal with the consequences of Jim becoming…show more content…
Huck took what seemed to be a traumatizing moment for Jim and tried to turn it into a joke for his own entertainment. Once Jim put everything together and realized what Huck had attempted to do, Jim explained how heartbroken and devastated he was when he thought he had lost and how excited he was to find him again. Once Huck heard how upset he had made Jim, it was a turning point in Huck’s maturing. It was the transition into the second stage of skepticism where he began to realize that Jim actually had feelings and was also a human. In realization of what he had done, Huck said, “It made me feel so mean I could almost kiss his foot to get him to take it back. It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a n*gger—but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way” (95). This was the moment he began to really think about his actions and how it affected other people. This was a sign of maturity and
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