Michael Penney
Dr. Suter
American Literature I
November 18, 2014
Short Essay #2: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Question: The first section of the novel ends with Huck's staged death. In what ways does this serve a symbolic function?
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is, at its core, a coming of age story about one boy’s self-discovery that separates him from the society he lives in. The portion of Huck’s life told in the book can be split up into two parts—one half where he lives in St. Petersburg,
Missouri and the other when he’s on his adventure with Jim the runaway slave on the raft.
The catalyst that splits Huck’s life into two is in chapter 7 where the boy elaborately fakes his own death and escapes to an island on the Mississippi River. Huck’s staged death early on in the novel serves an important symbolic function because it ejects Huck from a life in society to a life outside of society. Outside of society, Huck is able to see the hypocritical aspects of life and learn from them instead of taking part in the charade. The insights that
Huck gains following his faked death allow the boy to grow in ways that he never would have been able to if he had stayed in society.
The novel begins after Mark Twain’s earlier book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer where Huckleberry Finn and his mischievous friend Tom Sawyer discovered a lost treasure of gold and acquire it as their own personal fortune. Huck has been placed under the

adoptive care of the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson. The two ladies attempt to educate and civilize young Huck through a steady regiment of school lessons and religion; however, the boy finds all of this to be very disagreeable and admits to being discontent with civilized life. Huck says that “it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways”
(Twain, ch. 1).
With the intention of leaving the Widow and her sister, Huck runs away until Tom Sawyer tells him to “go back to the widow and be respectable” so that Huck might join Tom’s made up band of robbers
(Twain, ch. 1).
The uneasy civilized life Huck lives with the Widow comes to an end when his drunkard father Pap shows up to claim custody over his boy. In truth, Pap is after his son’s fortune and Huck knows this; the boy sells his fortune to Judge Thatcher for a dollar before his father can take it from him. If Pap can’t claim his son’s fortune, he can at least claim custody over the boy. Over the course the first segment of the story, Pap reveals himself to be a terrible and abusive father that Huck has no love for. After a particularly disturbing night with Pap, Huck resolves to leave his father.
When Pap leaves the cabin that he and Huck live in, Huck springs into action. He takes all the valuables and utilities from the cabin and puts them in a canoe. In order to make the cabin look like it was robbed and Huck killed inside, the boy axes down the door and kills a pig and spreads its blood around the facility. Huck, in his eagerness to touch on every possible detail that might convince someone of his death, tells the reader, “I did wish
Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and

throw in the fancy touches”
(Twain, ch. 7).
After everything is said and done, Huck leaves and enters his adventure on the Mississippi river where the rest of the story takes place.
The act of faking his own demise is a revolutionary action on the part of Huck.
Everything before this point in the story shows that Huck is discontent with the life he lives in civilized society, which creates people like the Widow Douglas and Judge Thatcher and horrors like his father Pap. In order to escape this bleak reality, Huck cannot runaway and leave doubts sown into the minds of the people he’s left behind on whether or not he may return. Huck has to leave behind a gruesome scene that all but confirms his violent demise that will be discovered by the people he wants to escape from.
Death, fake or not, also serves as a facilitator for a metaphorical rebirth. Through his apparent death, Huck escapes society and its expectations of him and the lessons that he has learned from it. Huck’s “new life” frees up his time and mind for a reevaluation of society and his place in it, especially in regards to the place of slaves and blacks in the white-dominated south. If Huck had stayed in St. Petersburg with Widow Douglas, Judge
Thatcher, or Pap, he would not have gained the perspectives he acquired living on the raft with Jim. It’s only in his “life after death” does Huckleberry Finn grow to become a better person, free from the clutches of a society that had unknowingly created in him his prejudices and his values.

Work Cited:
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). Champaign, Ill.:
Project Gutenberg, 199. Website. URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm