What Is The End Of Huck Finn

Endings of books are often the part of the novel that can make or break the reader’s experience. When one spends his or her time focusing on a specific lesson or theme, he or she wants the novel to create an appropriate ending to sum up the thoughts and ideas of the author and characters. Such is the case in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which shows the progress and maturity of Huck Finn throughout the novel, however the end of the novel seems to end inappropriately by sending Huck back into his old ways and focusing more on Tom Sawyer’s shenanigans rather than Huck’s growth.

First, Huck Finn starts off as a follower who looks up to Tom Sawyer and wants to be just like him. For example, when learning about the “good” the “bad”
Huck goes from considering turning Jim in when they first run off to saying “All right, then, I’ll go to hell,” (Twain 250) when he decides the right thing to do is to rescue Jim from the Phelps’ farm. However, once Tom comes along with his grand scheme to rescue Jim, which includes putting Jim’s life in harms way, Huck’s actions act as a betrayal to Jim. After all, throughout the novel, Huck;s maturation was best depicted by his relationship with Jim, so his actions in the final episodes of the novel seem to resort back to the way Huck thinks of Jim in the beginning when he plays pranks on him. Also, along the journey Huck and Jim become individuals while floating down the Mississippi, but sadly they seem to be under control of Tom once again in the end. Once again Huck is a follower of Tom,even though he grew so much throughout the novel to become his own person. Thus causing him to lose site of the importance of how he treats Jim, who has become a father figure to him. The end of the novel should have focused on the important and matured relationship between Huck and Jim which taught Huck that colored people were people too, a very valuable concept during the time period in which the book was
Since Pap is dead, Huck no longer has to live in fear of his father visiting again, and Jim is no longer a slave, so he does not have to worry about being captured and sold. They both can begin new lives as free men, which is much deserved after their long journey and many threatening situations. Although the freedom of the main characters is very important, so is the growth of the two dynamic characters. The audience spent much of the novel learning through the life lessons that the characters also learned from, so when all the changes Huck has gone through seem to evaporate and the novel ends like he did not grow at all, it is devastating to those who were invested in Huck’s