Huck Finn Reflection

Widely hailed as the quintessential American novel, Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has been analyzed and reanalyzed by literary historians for generations. An epic tale of the conflict between the individual mind and the collective consciousness, the novel chronicles one boys journey into manhood, and an escaped slave's exodus in search of freedom. Although both characters are fleeing their authoritarian past in search of independence, one of the central themes the author based the book upon, neither protagonist speaks for Mark Twain directly, instead, it is their combined story that illustrates the inner meaning of the book.

Huck Finn, although he arrives at many of the same conclusions about individuality and personal responsibility as the author, does so through naivety and and ignorance, as opposed to Twain's method of logic and reason. Huck, an uneducated Southern boy has a natural disdain for authority figures who curtail his freedom in any way, be it for his benefit or not. When he was taken in off the streets by a widow who tried to mold him into a respectable young gentleman, he actively resisted every effort she made to change him into something he was not, from trying to instill the fear of God into him, or even just correcting his posture.

This antipathy led to Huck becoming a person who defined himself through his own choices, and a great proponent of personal responsibility and self-sufficiency; in other words a rugged individualist and the archetypal American. It is this end result, not Huck's method of reaching it, that Twain idealized in his novel, and he encouraged his readers to reach this goal by the means of their choice.

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is heralded as the great American novel not because it defends the land, the people, or the government of America, but instead the ideals upon which it was founded. Twain was a staunch critic of the mob mentality that made slavery and other such atrocities possible, and he hoped he could prevent future occurrences of such events by imploring the denizens of America to think for themselves and stand by their logical conclusions despite the opposition of the masses. This is the moral Mark Twain attempted to instill in the reader of his magnum opus, and this is why his novel remains influential over a century after it was first published.