An Analysis of

Huckleberry Finn
by MATEUSZ BUCZKO

‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ is more than just the light-hearted

adventure story of a white boy and black slave as they journey down the
Mississipi River. If one penetrates this picaresque surface, one can see that the
story also contains a strong if subtle commentary on the society of the time, for
which Huck – in his words and actions, and through the characters he meets and
becomes mixed up with – serves as a medium. Throughout the text, we see
Huck struggle with these sort of people – one can clump them under the general
banner of ‘sivilization’ – as his own, natural conscience counters their views and
values. Thus, more than being just a picaresque novel a la Tom Sawyer, ‘The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ presents us with a maturing boy single-
handedly dealing with and ultimately overcoming the hypocritical and corrupt
influences of human society.

One of Twain’s primary indictments in the text is false good-doing, as

exemplified in Passage One by Miss Watson and the Widow. For one thing,
good-doing is often hypocritical. The Widow does not allow Huck to smoke,
though Huck tells us that “she took snuff, too; of course that was all right,
because she done it herself.” However, it is Miss Watson in particular who
epitomises the negatives of good-doing. Though only having moved in, she
immediately takes responsibility for Huck’s learning and behaviour. He
complains, “She worked me middling hard for about an hour, then the widow
made her ease up.” This highlights the difference between Miss Watson and the
Widow – the Widow, though also a good-doing hindrance at times, does not
impose ‘sivilization’ onto Huck the way Miss Watson does. Whereas the former
is still sympathetic, the latter is too ruthless to deserve sympathy; in trying to
reform Huck into a model middle-class boy, she is a great and constant pain to
him: “Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome.”
Miss Watson’s good-doing is also selfish in a way, as she regards it as her
ticket to Heaven. When Huck says he wishes he was at the bad place, she tells
him “it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole
world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place.” It is as if her life of
proper behaviour and good-doing is simply an assurance for the right afterlife.
Furthermore, her moralizing preaching also runs against Huck’s practical
character. He sees the bad place as simply something different, and therefore
exciting and good - “All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a
change, I warn’t particular.” Later he says “I couldn’t see no advantage in going
where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never
said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.” Miss
Watson can’t understand Huck’s innocent, down-to-earth way of viewing her
ridiculous ‘good place – bad place’ system. For an adventurous child such as him,
her description of the good place sounds dreadful: “I didn’t think much of it. But
I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she
said no by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and
me to be together.”
This shows another of Huck’s values, the value he places on friendship
above all else. As we have just seen, he is happy to go to the bad place so long as
his friend Tom Sawyer is there. A far more powerful and serious example is in
Passage 2, when – having to decide between dobbing in Jim and going to hell –
Huck thinks for a minute and then says to himself, “All right, then, I’ll go to
hell”, and tears up his letter to Miss Watson. He does not realize that, in both
instances, he is actually doing the right thing by opting to go to the bad place. In
the first instance, he is showing us his spirit of life and adventure, and his
eagerness to be with his friend. In the second instance, he is showing us that he
values Jim’s freedom more than he does his own in the afterlife. It is a reflection
of his kind and innocent spirit. In both instances, the good places actually
represent negatives of sivilization – good-doing in the first, and racism in the
second. By rejecting them, Huck is rejecting sivilization, as he does throughout
the entire novel.
 We see Huck’s socially-implanted conscience at work at the beginning of
Passage 2. Huck, afraid of the consequences for his ‘sins’, decides to pray, “but
the words wouldn’t come”. He believes this is because he is “playing double. I
was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the
biggest one of all.” This ‘sin’, of course, is that he knows of a black slave’s escape
but has failed to dob him in. Of course, in choosing Jim’s freedom over his
chance of going to Heaven, Huck is showing the strength and purity of his
goodness. It is a victory of genuine humanity over the corrupted moral code,
created and maintained by ‘sivilization’, which it is replaced by in most human
beings over time.
Huck’s good, sympathetic humanity is also evident in Passage 3, where his
former companions – the degenerate duke and king – are tarred and feathered by
a mob after a performance of the Royal Nonesuch. Huck says “it made me sick
to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t
ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world.” He goes home
feeling “kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow – though I hadn’t
done nothing.” He is capable of feeling sympathy for the duke and the king
despite witnessing their degeneracy on multiple occasions, and being a victim of
their lies and selfishness himself. Indeed, he even goes beyond sympathy to
feeling guilty, simply because he did not warn the conmen about the mob’s plan
in time.
The final paragraph of Passage 3 is particularly interesting: “that’s always
the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s
conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway…It takes up more
room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow.” Huck
complains of this because his conscience is at ends with the views and values of
‘sivilization’. Because of the confusion and mixed feelings his conscience’s fight
with the socially-implanted socially-created moral code creates, he regards it as a
pain, though in reality it saves him from ever committing any real wrong-doing.
Were it not for his own true conscience, he would have – among other things –
sent that letter to Miss Watson in Passage 2, believing himself justified in doing so
despite sending a good man, who has done a great deal for him and loved him,
back into slavery. The fact is, though he considers himself a sinner because he
failed the social moral code, he is in fact the complete opposite – in listening to
his innately good heart, he has not fallen to the corruption that the rest of his
society has.
While the novel is structurally picaresque, this internal struggle in Huck
between his genuine goodness and his socially-implanted moral code adds a hint
of psychology to the novel. Numerous times we are given insights into Huck’s
thoughts and feelings, and often Twain uses these to imply a certain attitude
towards something. For example, after writing the letter to Miss Watson about
Jim, Huck says “I felt good and all washed clean of sin”. Of course, this feeling is
fake, because in fact Huck was not sinning at all by allowing Jim to keep his
freedom. But through this Twain is able to show that religion – of which ‘sin’ is
a major concept – is artificial, serving only to prop up the similarly artifical views
and values of society. He indicts religion many other times in the novel through
Huck – for example, when the Widow refuses to let Huck smoke, Huck
complains “Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her,
and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me
for doing a thing that had some good in it.”
There is also the intense depression Huck experiences at the end of
Passage 1, which is of no direct consequence to the picaresque unfolding of
events. He talks of death and ghosts and a spider burning up in a candle, working
himself up into a state of great depression and fear. This seems to be the terrible
impact excessive ‘sivilizing’ has on Huck – after the Widow’s and Miss Watson’s
endless “pecking”, he feels wasted and empty and bad. It is the same feeling he
has after witnessing the duke and the king’s punishment at the hands of the mob;
he feels “kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow”. Though
physically tough and mentally smart, he has a very sensitive nature – among other
things, he hates being oppressed by ‘sivilization’, and hates to see others suffer –
even if they are unpleasant conmen.

‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’, though a wonderful and idyllic

adventure story, is a lot more than just that. It is a brilliant piece of satire,
criticizing – usually in comic disguise, but sometimes openly and emotionally –
the society which Huck is surrounded by on his journey down the river.
Whether it be do-gooding, religion or racism, Twain does not hesitate to expose
the faults within human society, and places his hero – Huckleberry Finn – at
odds with this mighty, degenerate force he calls ‘sivilization’. His hero is not a
great warrior, but a clever, rebellious boy, a boy who refuses to accept the ideals
that sivilization – for example in the form of Miss Watson – tries to impose on
him. The story is more than just a series of fun and exciting adventures – it shows
us the development of a good-hearted child growing up amid a callous,
hypocritical and immoral society, absorbing much of it but, in the end, always
staying true to his own innate goodness.