Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book that follows that of Tom Sawyer. It is set in a small town in Missouri which sits along the Mississippi River. At the end of the book Tom Sawyer the character of Huckleberry Finn is left poor with a drunkard father. Tom Sawyer is his friend whose great imagination led him to actually discover a stash of gold that robbers had hidden. As a result Huckleberry Finn was able to get quite a bit of money which was held on his behalf in the bank. Huck was then adopted by a woman who lived with her sister.

With the opening of Huckleberry Finn Huck finds himself far from thrilled about his new adopted life which is full of school and church and a lot of cleanliness and manners. Tom Sawyer asks him to stick it out so he does. But then Tom lets Huck know that he is starting a new robbers gang and Huck needs to remain respectable to become part of it. This goes well until Huck’s father appears back in town demanding the money that Huck had in the bank.

The widow who adopted Huck works with a local judge to try and get custody but there is another judge in town who thinks that the father should be allowed to take over care of Huck even though he is an alcoholic. This judge goes so far as to bring Huck’s alcoholic father into his home so as to reform him. This effort of course ends in misery and soon enough the man is harassing Huck who has now learned how to read and write. His father eventually kidnaps him and takes him to a cabin across the river.

As the book continues to follow the story it envelopes the themes of racism and slavery that were so prominent in earlier Mark Twain books. Huckleberry Finn was written two decades after the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation but the effects of slavery and racism were still prominent in the South and something the people had to struggle with throughout reconstruction. As this novel was being completed race relations had started on a positive path only to veer back toward negative. Jim Crow laws were implemented to oppress the blacks in the South yet again. The new form of racism in the South proved difficult to combat. These themes are woven throughout the novel.