Finn

Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is one of the most beloved characters of American fiction and the title character of Mark Twain’s classic novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1885 as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Even Ernest Hemingway so highly regarded this novel as to say: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn...it’s the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." Starting life as the son of a lower class, illiterate ne’er-do-well, young Finn is the subject of a “civilizing” attempt by the Widow Douglas at the opening of the book, when he is 13 years old. The story takes place against the backdrop of the Mississippi River, where Huck (escaping both “civilization” and his drunken father), and the runaway slave, Jim, share an endless menu of hilarious adventures. Unlike his middle class friend, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn comes from a lower stratum of society, and is closer to Jim’s reality. With a keen logic for one so young, he figures out that he and Jim actually share a certain fate from which they are both running away. Jim is looked upon as someone’s property, and in that society therefore, helping him escape is a sin. Huck Finn, however, comes to understand the innate error of the institution of slavery and as he gets to know Jim and his story, his healthy inclination to question authority leads him to the realization of his and Jim’s common humanity. Yes, Huckleberry Finn needs a good bath and a grueling course in grammar, but his heart and soul are exactly right.