Essay about Portrayal of Family in Huckleberry Finn

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Huckleberry Finn provides the narrative voice of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. Huck’s honest voice combined with his personal vulnerabilities reveal the portrayal of family in the novel. Although many themes and topics can be found in this novel, the topic of family is very important because in the end, Huck’s new family provides peace for the confused, ignorant boy Huck was in the beginning of the novel. Through his travels, Huck accumulates his “floating family”. Through Huck’s adventures, he finds not only people to join his “floating family”, but places that feel like home for Huck as well.

Huck is a kind of natural philosopher, skeptical of social doctrines, and willing to set forth new ideas. However, when it …show more content…
Nevertheless, throughout their time together, Huck has still had the idea of turning Jim in. Huck searches the social and religious belief systems that white society has taught him for a way out of his predicament about turning Jim in. In the end, Huck is unable to pray because he cannot truly believe in these systems, for he cares too much about Jim to deny Jim’s existence and humanity. “It was a close place. I took . . . up (the letter I’d written to Miss Watson), and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming”. The logical consequences of Huck’s action as well as Huck’s growing affection for Jim, rather than the lessons society has taught him, drive Huck to tear up the letter. Though he does not admit this truth to himself, Huck trades his fate for Jim’s and as a result, accepts the life of a black man as equal to is own. By helping the doctor treat Tom after Tom was shot in the leg as well as shielding Huck from seeing his father’s corpse, Jim affirms that he is not only a decent human being, but also a
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