Huckleberry Finn Relationship

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn novel centers around the adventures of an imaginative, and impressionable young white boy, Huck, and an illiterate—albeit wise and paternal—black slave, Jim. The relationship between these two characters change and develop all throughout the entirety of the novel. A pairing that I find relatable, although not without its stark differences, is the relationship between the two main characters in the hit show, Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan. The show’s protagonists are Jesse Pinkman, a street-smart drug dealer who’s down on his luck at the beginning of the series, and Walter White, a middle-aged chemistry teacher and family man who has recently found out he has lung cancer and must find
a way to provide for his wife and son before it’s too late. These two protagonists couldn't be further apart on the social spectrum if they tried, much like Huck and Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but each pair of characters find out more about one another and go on a series of crazy, and often times dangerous adventures together.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you learn right off the bat that Huck Finn doesn’t have the most sought-after life.
For the most part, he’s formally uneducated, but very imaginative and independent. Huck lives life without really having much guidance or having an elder that he can look up to. Jesse Pinkman, one of the protagonists in Breaking Bad, shares a few common characteristics with Huck, being that he also is very independent and has little to no guidance at the beginning of the series. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim, serves as the only reasonable adult figure for Huck, as Huck’s own father is a miserable drunk and a generally bad person. In Breaking Bad, Walter White serves as the paternal figure to Jesse in many ways, often protecting him from danger and teaching him important lessons throughout the
show.

In the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White is taken on a ride-along with his DEA brother-in-law to execute a drug bust. During the ride-along, Jesse Pinkman, a former student of Walter’s, is seen jumping out of a building to escape the police. In a future episode, Walter, while working at his second job at a car wash, collapses, and is then diagnosed by a doctor to be suffering from lung cancer. Desperate to provide his family with enough money after his inevitable passing, Walter teams up with Jesse to cook methamphetamine and rise up the ladder in the drug trade. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim overhears Miss Watson talking to a slave trader who wishes to buy Jim, not wanting to stick around and wait to see what happens, Jim escapes to the same island that Huck escaped to, coincidentally. Both Jim and Walter have experienced misfortune from things that were out of their control. Jim didn’t choose to be a slave, he was forced to be one because of his skin color. The same goes for Walter. Walter didn’t choose to be diagnosed with cancer, he was dealt a bad hand and he had to live with it. Trying to find a way to better the lives of both their families, Walter and Jim team up with Jesse and Huck, respectively, to embark on a series of adventures, and they shortly find themselves in some very sticky situations.

As both stories progress, so do the characters and their relationships.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim have been shown to protect one another in the face of adversity and/or danger. An example of this is when Jim sees the dead body of Huck’s father and does not allow Huck to get a close look at Pap’s face, for Jim did not want Huck to know his Pap was the one who had died. Jim acts as a parental figure for Huck, something that Huck does not get with his own biological father. In Breaking Bad, Walter and Jesse do not immediately start off on the friendliest of terms, but throughout the series, the two grow a strong friendship and pull each other from dangerous situations on more than a couple occasions. An example of this is when Jesse goes to a local top drug distributor, and wants to show off the methamphetamine that he and Walter “cooked” in hopes of making more money. Tuco, the drug distributor, is a highly unpredictable and violent criminal. Impressed by the quality of the methamphetamine, he offers to pay for the product at a later time. Not convinced that Tuco is a man who should be trusted, Jesse tries to book it and escape with the product. Tuco then feels disrespected and beats Jesse to a pulp. After Walter sees the aftermath of Jesse’s beatdown, he decides to take matters into his own hands. Walter visits Tuco in the same place that Jesse had met him prior, with more “meth,” and asks for even more money than what was previously mentioned, the
additional money to cover for the pain and suffering that Jesse received at the hands of Tuco. Tuco is dumbfounded that Walter would have the gall to ask for what he considers a crazy proposition. Walter then reveals that the “meth” he had brought to the meeting is not really methamphetamine, but rather an explosive substance he created that looks like meth, and throws it to the ground, leaving Tuco’s headquarters in ruins. Appalled by Walter’s antics, Tuco then agrees to deal with Walter and strikes up a partnership with Walter to distribute more meth. Walter goes to great lengths to get what he wants, and does not let Jesse’s beatdown go in vain. We see more examples of these two sets of partners protecting one another as both stories progress, and with more adventures, the more risky situations get.

It goes without saying that people will go to great lengths for the people that they care about, sometimes teetering on the border of what’s considered right and wrong by society. We don’t have to actually have relationships to take away something important from reading or watching their experiences. The reason for this is because the way in which these characters are presented to us makes us feel like we’re right there with them, being a fly on the wall and observing their actions and thoughts. We can learn from these characters how to be strong in the face of adversity, and also what not to do at times.