Research Essay “Of Mice and Men”

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First, Last ENC-1102 Professor Costa March 27, 2019

Lessons From Mark Twain’s

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Mark Twain in 1885, is a novel delving

into the life of the protagonist, Huckleberry Finn, who is a minor character in the famous novel

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Throughout the novel, Huckleberry Finn and his “companion”

named Jim, travel a great deal of the Mississippi River on a raft and come across different people

and issues that they have to face in their search for freedom. Although both are looking for

freedom, it is for different reasons. Huckleberry Finn was born to a drunk for a father, and had a

terrible childhood until he struck it rich with Tom Sawyer and started living with Miss Watson

and her sister “the Widow.” Huck’s companion, Jim, at this time is the slave and servant of Miss

Watson and the Widow. Eventually Huckleberry’s father returns looking for Huck and his

money, which he knew Huckleberry had. The father manages to win custody of Huck and takes

him to a remote place to hold him hostage. This begins Huckleberry’s quest for freedom, as he

escapes his father and coincidently meets up with Jim, who is also escaping for freedom because

he overheard that he was going to be sold. Neither Jim nor Huckleberry planned to or agreed to

run away together, but through unforeseen circumstances they met together and became traveling

companions for freedom. Although the story itself is widely known, many do not know of the

novel’s significance to the writer himself, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). It is widely believed

that the character of Huckleberry Finn is based on Mark Twain’s childhood neighbor and friend,

Tom Blankenship. This isn’t the only thing in the novel that relates to Mark Twain’s personal

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life, for him and Huckleberry Finn both had similar changes in their view on the morality of

slavery. Even though Mark Twain wrote the novel with an anti-slavery message, he did not

always feel this way about slavery in his life.

The character Huckleberry Finn is as ordinary as any other boy of his time period. He has

a huge imagination, is playful and mischievous, yet he is also compassionate and has his heart is

in the right place. For many people who have read the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn, they believe that Huck Finn is a fictional character that was given characteristics in order

to follow a story, in reality the character Huckleberry Finn meant so much more to Mark Twain

than most any of his readers will ever know. In an interview with Mark Twain, he had said, “A

fictional character is drawn from the author’s “recollection of someone he had known.” He

continued, at times the presentation “may possibly be from the blending of... two or more real

characters in his recollection”(Hendrick 1). This means that he didn’t just blindly make up

characters to fit his story, but instead took his time to relate them to important people in his own

life. The Blankenships, in particular, played a huge role in the early life of Mark Twain,

providing him a childhood friend and different characters and stories for the books he wrote later

in life. The Clemons (Mark Twain’s family) and the Blankenships both moved to Hannibal

Missouri in the same year, 1839. Tom Blankenship was Mark Twain’s best friend at the time,

creating a brotherly bond that both enjoyed deeply. Sadly, Tom fled from Hannibal shortly after

moving there, causing Mark Twain’s memories of him to be shrouded in a youthful mist. Thus,

Mark Twain’s recollections of Tom Blankenship were constantly tinged with the innocence and

sweet naivety of childhood. Although Blankenship and Mark Twain were separated at a young

age, Twain is confident in his perspective of Blankenship as he described him in The Adventures

of Huckleberry Finn, even “In his Autobiography he wrote, ‘In ‘Huckleberry Finn’ I have drawn

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Tom Blankenship exactly as he was . . . he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties

were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person— boy or man— in the

community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy, and was envied by

all the rest of us. We liked him; we enjoyed his society. And as his society was forbidden us by

our parents, the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got

more of his society than of any other boy’s” (Hendrick 2). Tom Blankenship isn’t the only one in

his family to influence Mark Twain. Tom’s older brother, Benson Blankenship, also played as

big a role as Tom in Twain’s life. At some point in their time together, Benson discovered a

runaway slave on one of the islands lining the Mississippi River and helped him escape. “This

story was transformed into the account of Huck finding and helping the runaway slave Jim”

(Hendrick 1), which is one of the main events in the novel. Without these personal experiences at

a young age, it’s impossible to tell where Mark Twain’s stories would take place, or if they

would even be written at all.

Despite the book bans and controversies created by some who believed that Mark Twain

was a racist, he continued to push an anti-slavery message—for those with the ability to read

deeper into his material. Many people see the book as racist due purely to the language, using the

words “Injun” and “Nigger” over 200 times throughout the novel. Mark Twain grew up in a time

period where slavery was rampant. No one ever taught him that these things were wrong. He

once stated that “In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that there

was anything wrong about it. No one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing

against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the

doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind — and then the texts were

read aloud to us to make the matter sure; if the slaves themselves had an aversion to slavery they

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were wise and said nothing” (Popova). This environment was not an ideal one for a child to

watch, but even though he knew they were slaves he was still nice to them, “Twain recounts his

childhood friendships with black slaves: “All the negroes were friends of ours, and with those of

our own age we were in effect comrades. I say in effect, using the phrase as a modification. We

were comrades, and yet not comrades; color and condition interposed a subtle line which both

parties were conscious of, and which rendered complete fusion impossible” (Popova). Even

though they were never completely “comrades,” young Twain still treated them with the respect

that they deserved. When he got older, and fully understood the abhorrent nature of slavery,

Mark Twain befriended an African-American named, John T. Lewis, who became his longtime

friend. John T. Lewis became the inspiration for the character Jim in The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn. In the novel, Huck Finn becomes friends with Jim and has a change of heart

about slavery. It is certainly not a stretch to say that the same happen to Twain.

Mark Twain took great time and consideration in crafting his stories, always creating

characters from his own life experience. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is also widely

banned for racist language, despite the book having an underlying theme of anti-slavery. Due to

this language, there is also a common misconception that Mark Twain was a racist, when he, in

fact, was not. In literature, this is the difference between aggrandizing racist or other abhorrent

behaviors, and illuminating them — shedding light on what humanity has done wrong and can

do better.

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Works Cited

Popova, Maria. “Mark Twain on Racism, How Religion Is Used to Justify Injustice, and What

His Mother Taught Him About Compassion.” Brain Pickings, 17 May 2017,

www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/24/mark-twain-on-slavery-empathy-compassion/.

Hendrick, George. The Blankenships in Mark Twain’s Fiction: Some Speculations. Vol. 56,

Acedemic Onefile, 2018.

Twain, Mark, 1835-1910. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. London ; New York,

:Penguin Books, 1994. Print.