Celebration of Freedom in Huckleberry Finn Sarah Simpler

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn so innocently reveals the potential nobility of human nature in its well-loved main characters that it could never successfully support anything so malicious as slavery. Huckleberry Finn and traveling companion Jim, a runaway slave, are unknowing champions for humility, mercy, and selflessness. The adventurous nature of the story and its noble characters celebrates freedom from social and economic restraint, and it is apparent from the beginning through his satiric portrayal of human characteristics that Twain believes that all people deserve their own freedom.

While Twain's story does have the outward appearance of a boyhood adventure tale, it is impossible to overlook the symbolic nature in the two "runaways'" desires for such an adventure. Both Huck and Jim are running away from the social constraints of their worlds. Huck feels confined by his new "civilised" life, and Jim by his slave status. In the Widow Douglas' household, Huck is not allowed to indulge himself in his former delights of boyhood. He feels trapped by the various social rules and expectations the two widows try to enforce upon him. Jim is confined by the bonds of slavery into an uncomfortable...