Archetypes in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain utilizes the archetypes of the Unwilling Hero, the Shape Shifter, and Haven vs. Wilderness to show that Huck Finn and Jim can find freedom all along the banks of the Mississippi River. Huck portrays the unwilling hero because he puts a lot of thought into something before he does it, even though it will benefit everybody. He is also very hesitant to perform heroic acts. The King and Duke show the archetype of the shape shifter because they are constantly lying about their identities and deceiving everybody. The Mississippi represents the characters “haven”, and Huck and Jim’s home represents the “wilderness”.
Huckleberry Finn portrays the archetype of the unwilling hero. Huck is very reluctant to do the right thing, and always feels guilty about everything he does. The challenges Huck had to overcome almost caused Huck and Jim to loose their chance at finding freedom, but he always built up his courage and was pushed to fight for what he thought was right. After Tom and Huck spooked Jim, Tom wanted to take it further and "tie Jim to a tree for fun" (page 5). Huck had felt guilty for scaring Jim and didn’t want to do anymore harm, so Huck said "no; he might wake and make a disturbance" (page 5). This relates to him being an unwilling hero because you can see that Huck felt bad for doing the wrong thing and his conscience pushed him to do the right thing the second time around. Another time when Huck did something to get Jim and himself further down the river was when he said "I won’t let no runaway niggers get by me if I can help it." (page 91). Huck then went on trying to convince himself that what he did was right. "They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low; because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see if warn;t no use for me to try to learn to do right…then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s’pose you’d ‘a’ done right and giver Jim up, would you felt
Huckleberry Finn portrays the archetype of the unwilling hero. Huck is very reluctant to do the right thing, and always feels guilty about everything he does. The challenges Huck had to overcome almost caused Huck and Jim to loose their chance at finding freedom, but he always built up his courage and was pushed to fight for what he thought was right. After Tom and Huck spooked Jim, Tom wanted to take it further and "tie Jim to a tree for fun" (page 5). Huck had felt guilty for scaring Jim and didn’t want to do anymore harm, so Huck said "no; he might wake and make a disturbance" (page 5). This relates to him being an unwilling hero because you can see that Huck felt bad for doing the wrong thing and his conscience pushed him to do the right thing the second time around. Another time when Huck did something to get Jim and himself further down the river was when he said "I won’t let no runaway niggers get by me if I can help it." (page 91). Huck then went on trying to convince himself that what he did was right. "They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low; because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see if warn;t no use for me to try to learn to do right…then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s’pose you’d ‘a’ done right and giver Jim up, would you felt