Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1083plaintively in the distance—what Huck calls “the
lonesomest sound in the whole world”—he really
does wish that he were dead.
When he fakes his own murder, Huck is deliber-
ately setting himself apart from everyone he has ever
known—permanently, as far as he knows. But it is
not long before he begins to feel lonely and eager to
pass the time. After he sees traces of a campfire on
the desolate Jackson Island, he cannot rest until he
finds out who else is on the island with him. While
it could be that he is anxious to make sure he is not
in danger, Huck’s happy and relieved reaction upon
finding Jim suggests he was just lonely.
Later, when he and Jim are separated among the
islands in the fog, Huck again feels lost and lone-
some. Upon being reunited with Jim, he scrambles
aboard the raft and is very glad to be back in the
place he has begun to think of as home. As the raft
becomes a surrogate home, Jim likewise evolves into
a kind of surrogate for the family Huck lacks.
Another companion and surrogate family mem-
ber is Buck Grangerford. With their similar ages
and names, not to mention their shared dislike of
clothes and school, he and Huck could be twins. But
even Buck—who is probably closer to Huck than
anyone in the novel except Tom Sawyer—cannot
win enough of Huck’s trust to learn his real name.
Like the others who give Huck food and shelter on
his travels, the Grangerfords get only an alias and
a fake story about his background in return. Still,
Buck’s death is one of the book’s most painful scenes.
Haunted by the sight of his young friend’s murder
and unable to understand the irrational feud that
caused it, Huck is relieved to escape civilization yet
again for life on the river.
The river itself is a powerful symbol of Huck’s
separation from society. Sometimes he and Jim can
overhear the voices of other travelers in the dark;
other times they are the only two souls in sight. This
shared isolation does not bother Huck at all. “Other
places do seem so cramped up and smothery,” he
says, “but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy
and comfortable on a raft.”
Finally, it is worth noting that Huck often uses
the words still and lonesome together, even inter-
changeably. This dislike of stillness may be related
to his fear of death. It may also help to explain why
he is consistently, almost compulsively, on the move.
The book ends with Huck planning to run away
from society yet again as he sets out for the Terri-
tory—that is, the region then reserved for Native
Americans in what is now Oklahoma—alone.
Cassandra Nelsonrace in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck Finn can make for a shocking and uncom-
fortable read. Words that would be used only in an
offensive and derogatory sense today are bandied
about in a casual, matter-of-fact manner by nearly
every character in the novel. Contemporary readers
whose first instinct is to dismiss the book for such
language may find something worthwhile in the way
that it forces us to ask important questions about
the assumptions underlying conceptions of race in
Twain’s time and ours.
African Americans in Huck Finn are slaves, with
one exception. (Huck’s Pa briefly mentions a black
professor in Ohio in his rant against giving African
Americans the right to vote.) They are uneducated
and often superstitious, with the majority of their
superstitions devoted to warding off bad luck and
evil spirits—hardly a surprise given slaves’ hard lot
in life. Huck describes Jim as stubborn and unteach-
able: “I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t
learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.” But by and by, on
matters of race, Huck is the one who changes his
mind.
When Tom Sawyer wants to tie Jim to a tree “for
fun” early in the novel, Huck refuses, but only so that
he does not risk getting caught by the widow and
sent back to bed. Later, on the raft, Huck will pull
his own joke by convincing Jim that their separation
in the fog never happened, that Jim only dreamed it.
It is a mean trick to play on the man who greeted
him with warmth and emotion upon their reunion.
Jim’s dignified response humbles Huck: “[M]y heart
wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer
no mo’ what become er me en de raf ’. . . . En all you
wuz thinking ’bout wuz how you could make a fool
uv ole Jim wid a lie.” Huck apologizes to Jim and
defiantly tells the reader that he has never regret-
ted it.
Gradually, Huck begins to see Jim as a man
deserving of his freedom instead of a fugitive