eachings. Formal schooling is making Huck literate. Although Huck is growing accustomed to his new environment, he still strains against its restrictions. When Huck’s drunken father returns to kidnap Huck and plot to steal his money, Huck is forced to abandon his new family and society by staging his own death and escaping to Jackson’s Island and eventually down river. When his adventures grow to involve moral questions never before raised, he is forced to confront his feelings and contemplate his thoughts in order to formulate personally held views of right and wrong. Huck grows to reject the values that society has tried to instil in him. Throughout the course of the novel Huck matures as he meets a variety of people and lives a variety of adventures. He learns how to deal with people and situations and comes to his own understandings. The person who most helps Huck to mature is Jim. At the opening of the book Huck sees Jim as only a lowly slave who possesses no sense or intelligence. However, Huck only thinks this way because this is what society believes and what it teaches its adherents. As Huck gets to know Jim better, he realizes that Jim is more than the stereotypical slave and feelings of friendship and loyalty grow. Huck feels that it is his civil and Christian duty to return Jim to his owner. Concurrently he realizes that Jim is an equal, a friend, and a decent human being. In the end, Huck’s personal values overrule those of larger society. Huck accepts that, living within the parameters of Christian society, he will be punished in the after-life for helping Jim to freedom. Nevertheless, it is a price he is ready to pay in order to do what is, to his understanding, the right thing. Even though Huck still plays jokes on people, he feels guilty about playing with their minds. For example, when Huck gets separated from Jim in the fog, Huck tells Jim he dreamt the whole horrible incident, and that Huck was ther...
