Literary Analysis Huckleberry Finn

Literary analysis – Huckleberry Finn
The south has been labeled as a prejudice, conservative, ignorant and fundamentally religious, and with good reason. Such a narrow-minded society has created an environment where people are brought up to conform to these strict norms.
Huckleberry Finn challenges such conformity to society’s norms, in Mark Twain’s novel depicting a pre-civil war south. Un-educated and lower class Huck comes to an understanding of this through an adventure with the intellectual slave Jim, and succeeds in breaking from the norm.

Huckleberry Finn and the ex-slave Jim embark on their adventure in an 1800 America, before the initial outbreak of the Civil War. With Jim escaping enslavement in Missouri, the two cruise down the Mississippi river on a raft, in the backwards, uneducated, conservative, religious and prejudice part of the south. This is hinted at already in the beginning “It would get all around that Huck helped a nigger to get his freedom…” Not only does this suggest a prejudice environment, but it also hints at the setting being the south where slaves are looked down on. Later it goes on to describe how Huck would have to “go down and lick his boots in shame”, and how it is considered a dishonorable deed to help a slave.

Huck Finn is the son of a drunk, and is clearly the product of the lower class. We see this in the way that he is adopted and how he had to escape his drunken father.
Huck has not been conformed by mainstream southern society, which is visible in the way he interacts with Jim the slave. Also it seen in the way he is unable to inform Ms. Watson about the whereabouts of Jim. Furthermore he simply can’t confess his sin to god; he even says he’d rather go to hell.
This proves the point of a boy who has not been indoctrinated and conformed to southern religious values and beliefs.
He furthermore claims that he will “take up wickedness again, since it is in his line“ - Hence his lower class roots being the cause of this unwillingness to conform.
Jim initially comes across as being dumb and ignorant, as Huck explains why a Frenchmen speaks differently than Americans do. Jims lack of knowledge and understanding can be explained by his lack of education, seeing as how his spent his entire life in the cotton fields – not being subject to the outside world.
But in reality this particular passage shows that Jim has a deeper knowledge and understanding of things, which can be seen as a different form of intellect and understanding of the truth.
Huck explains the different languages by comparing a Frenchmen and an American with a cow and a cat – But as Jim points out a cat and a cow are two different animals while a Frenchmen and American are both men

Huck’s moral dilemma is one of the themes addressed in the story. Coming from a lower class family, with a drunken father, Huck has not received both moral and intellectual education. This leads Huck to distrust the morals of the southern society. His meeting with Jim causes him to question the norms indoctrinated into southern society further.
This is clearly visible when Huck struggles with his conscience, and decides that he’d rather go to hell than conform to society. On the raft Jim presents a different understanding of reality, which furthermore leads Huck to his own conclusion about southern culture.

Huckleberry Finn is written as a first person narrative, describing and narrating the events from the view of Huck. This gives us a very subjective truth, since it is voice and mind of Huck who’s telling the story.
This makes the narrator unreliable, due to the fact that we’re only hearing one side of the story. The events and characters are described directly through Huck’s thoughts. We see this when Huck is having a moral dilemma about whether or not he should have informed Ms. Watson about Jim.
On the other hand it does however give us a good understanding of Huck’s feelings and thoughts towards the events, which also makes it easier to understand why he acts and thinks in certain ways.

In other words, Huckleberry Finn was an uneducated and lower class boy who managed to break free from the prejudice and ignorant norms of the backwards south. Through his moral dilemmas with both god and Ms. Watson he came to the conclusion that he would not conform to such an unjust society.
Jim the slave helped him realize this through his alternative understanding of the truth.
This story does more than depict slavery in the south before the civil war; it challenges us to rethink our own understanding of the truth.