The Moral Development of Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, demonstrates Huck’s moral development as he encounters new people and a series of new events. During his adventures, Huck has always been taught from society to view black people as inferior. However, his conscience allows him to rise above society’s racism. Although Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were child hood friends, the fact that the two grew up with different family backgrounds: Tom was well nourished, on the other hand Huck was abused by his father, Pap, an alcoholic.

This resulted in the two characters having different morals, though Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer established their own rules for living differently, both in essence had the same morals to begin with. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer established their rules for living differently. Huck Finn encountered new characters in the novel, that was when he began to see the flaws of society. He went against society to save a man who he would have never had considered a friend in that life time. Huck Finn’s morals were that of a realist and practical. As Miss Watson attempted to teach Huck about religion and though he had no interest in “… no stock in dead people” (Twain 4).

Huck had not been taught with social values in the same way as a middle class boy like his childhood friend, Tom Sawyer had been. Another scenario of Huck’s morality developing as he encountered new characters is when the two frauds do their best to play the role of the Wilks brothers and try to corrupt Mary Jane and her sisters. Huck is morally against the King and Dukes plan. He realizes he has got to get the money and expose the two frauds because of his adoration for Mary Jane. Huck reaches a moral dilemma and decides to tell the truth for the first time in his life. He says Im blest if it dont look to me like the truth is better and actuly safer than a lie(180). Huck’s conscience is what told him that it had seemed “right” to have helped Jim. The choices that Huck had made in the novel would have given the average white man a heart attack because it had gone against what society has always taught them black people were inferior.

Huck then discovered that because of the background he had grown up with he applies the rules that he had grown up with to the rules that he had been taught to have created his own rules. Although there were times in the novel were he had portrayed that of a follower and not a leader Huck’s failures as a human being are natural because humans aren’t perfect and do make mistakes. Tom was everything Huck wasn’t which was creative and dominating. Tom had grown up in a luxurious household, he was a clever boy who was constantly looking for trouble and enjoyed pulling pranks. He had a good heart and conscience, whenever he saw that his actions had hurt another person in a serious way he knew what was right and wrong. His morals were reflected from reading romance and adventure novels.

Though throughout the novel we don’t see much of Tom he definitely grows as a character, he doesn’t reform completely, but he does grow to care about others more. What sets Tom Sawyer aside from Huck is that his morals would have never allowed him to have done what Huck Finn did, and that was to help Jim. “….I couldn’t ever understand…how he could help a-body set a free nigger free” (291). He knew all along that Miss Watson had passed away and Jim was free, but he makes Jim believe that he isn’t for self entertainment. “…and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun” (5).

Because of this selfish act Tom Sawyer was never able to understand what it was like to have not been self-centered. Huck realizes and understands he isn’t capable of pretending to be something he is not. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the greatest one of all (205). Before he tears up the letter to Miss Watson, he says, All right, then, Ill go to hell (206). For a boy such as Huck wanting to sacrifice himself for another human being emphasize that fact Huck knows what was right and understood what he did was completely unethical to anyone else. To have has grown up in the situation that he did, Huck had preserved. Throughout his journey Huck learned many things. He saw the cruel and unjust society he was a part of the whole time. The only difference is that he realized it was morally wrong.