Huck Finn Criticsim

A detailed Summary of Huck Finn Criticsim

Mark Twain's, Huckleberry Finn, although an excellent book, has a very weak and unrealistic ending. The two main characters, Huck and Jim are turned into comic characters and the seriousness of their journey down the river is lost. Twain lets the ending destroy the plot of the book by making it comic and unrelated to the episodes on the raft.

Leo Marx points out that the meaning of Huck and Jim's journey is lost. During their journey, Huck and Jim develop a very close relationship. Jim becomes like the father that Huck never truly experienced. "Jim is identified even more unmistakably as Huck's father by the love that he gives him." (Lynn p.214) Jim would do anything for Huck; such as calling him honey, trying to keep him happy, and taking over his watch so Huck could sleep. Likewise, Huck would do anything for Jim. He lies to the men about to search the raft and even decides he'll go to Hell for Jim. Although Huck and Jim have bonded throughout their time on the raft, Huck is somehow able to disregard Jim as a human and only regard him as a plaything. Both boys fill Jim's cell with snakes, spiders, and biting rats. They then further his misery by prolonging his stay in the cell while they ready a complicated, risk

Leo Marx states that "we are now asked to believe that the boy who felt pity for the rogues is now capable of making Jim's capture occasion for a game." No statement could be more accurate. Twain completely contradicts himself when he brings Huck back down to the same level as Tom. "By the time he reaches the Phelps place he is not the boy who had been playing robbers with Tom's gang in St. Petersburg before. He had deepened his knowledge of human nature and of himself." (Marx p. 205) Huck had matured greatly and it would have been nearly impossible for him to forget all of his experiences on the river and regress to an immature boy playing pranks on a simple Negro. He loved Jim and should not have been able to cause him the misery he did.

A second reason that Huck's transformation to subservient is unrealistic is his level of maturity after the journey. Throughout the journey, Huck continually grows and matures. He sees how inhumane people can be and he realizes that life is not always idealistic as Tom sees it. To Tom life is a continuous game. Huck on the other hand has experienced first hand how cruel people are to each other. He witnessed a friend being shot in the Grangerford/Shepardson feud and saw two men tarred and feathered. He felt compassion for the men even though they had caused him nothing but sorrow and misery. Huck describes seeing the Duke and King being carried

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Approximate Word count = 947
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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