Huckleberry 'Huck' Finn is a fictional boy created by Mark Twain, first introduced as a secondary character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) before becoming the narrator and protagonist of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Fleeing an abusive father and the constraints of civilized society, Huck rafts down the Mississippi River with Jim, an enslaved man escaping to freedom, and the pair's journey becomes the vehicle for Twain's satire of antebellum Southern racism and hypocrisy. Huck's internal struggle between the racist values instilled in him and his own growing conscience, resolved in his decision to help Jim even at the cost of what he believes is his own soul, made the novel a landmark, and controversial, study of morality, freedom and American identity. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Narrative RoleSourced to the subject's own accountNarrator and protagonist, a boy whose journey down the Mississippi tests his conscience against his society's morality 1 Defining TraitSourced to the subject's own accountInstinctive decency that leads him to defy the racist norms he has been raised to believe, most famously in his choice to help the enslaved Jim 1 Narrative role (class)Sourced to the subject's own account Narrative role (class)Sourced to the subject's own account Connections
Character In
Source Huckleberry Finn, character (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Sources
1. Huckleberry Finn, character (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Huckleberry Huck Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
- Character In: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
Was Huckleberry Finn based on a real boy?
Yes. Mark Twain based Huck largely on his own boyhood friend Tom Blankenship of Hannibal, Missouri, the son of a laborer, and said so in his own autobiography.
Twain grew up near the Blankenship family in Hannibal, Missouri, and wrote in his autobiography that "in Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was," describing him as ignorant and unwashed but with as good a heart as any boy ever had, and the only genuinely independent person in the community. Blankenship's freedom from the constraints other boys lived under, and the disapproval of the town's mothers that came with it, shaped both Tom Sawyer's Huck and the fuller character Twain gave him as narrator of his own novel.
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