Tracing Freedom

In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character Huck is juxtaposed with a slave named Jim. Their pursuit for freedom differs from their motivation and experience. The great Mississippi River is a powerful force of water that represents much of the freedom both Jim and Huck jointly feel as they float down the river. It doesn’t divide their experiences but reinforces the power the water has over them in controlling their movements and final designation. But away from the water left unguarded by civilized forces, the two find themselves facing differing motivations for seeking freedom. Huck seeks freedom from the ‘sivilzation’ attempt by Miss Watson who would say, “Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry – set up straight!” Much of Huck’s reason for jumping at the chance of an adventure stems from his desire to be free from the constraints of a society that placed him in the care of Miss Watson.

Jim’s freedom is from a traditional of slavery that marks the man by the color of his skin and the amount of labor he’s capable of. Jim’s price for freedom comes at a higher cost than Huck’s boyish flee from Miss Watson. In Chapter 37, Tom Sawyer, the adventurous and imaginative friend of Huck Finn, speaks to Jim: “Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and they wouldn’t think of hurting another person that pets them.” Tom continues later on about the importance of prisoners having rats: “But, Jim, you got to have ‘em – they all do. So don’t make no more fuss about it. Prisoners ain’t ever without rats. There ain’t on instance of it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies.” This conversation tends to 1) promote the image of man as superior to animal, 2) animals cared for would never hurt their owner, and 3) humans can teach animals, even rats, to go against their nature and become that which the human demands and trains of it.

Slavery, in its rough nature, takes a grown man and forces him against his nature to serve others before himself. Is Jim being compared to the very rat Tom Sawyer suggests he trains and “learn them tricks?” Jim seeks freedom from a world of servitude to others with a price sticker on his head. Huck, feeling imprisoned like a rat having to learn new tricks, despises the world of rules and etiquette. His real imprisonment was with his father kept him in the cabin. “He always locked the door and put the key under his head, nights.” Despite this cruelty, Huck describes “laying comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study.” The very freedom Huck sought after was a state of his own imprisonment.

The freedoms sought after in the Adventure of Huckleberry Finn demonstrate the motivation and experience in the characters Huck and Jim.