Huck Finn – Life on the Raft Vs Land
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In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Huck lives in two different settings. One of the settings is on land with the widow and with his father and the other is on the river with Jim. There are many differences of living on land as opposed to living on the Mississippi River. On land, Huck has more rules to live by and he has to watch himself so as not to upset the widow or his father. On the river, Huck didnt have to worry about anything except people finding Jim. He also had to worry about the king and the duke for a while. Even thought there are many differences of the two living styles, there are also some similarities.
Life on land was filled with many difficulties. There were many rules that Huck had to follow set by both the widow and his father. The widows main goal was to “civilize” Huck into a member of society. She expected Huck to go to school, wear clean clothes, sleep in his bed, and go to church. She just wanted him to be like a normal child of his age. Even though Huck bends the rules a bit and tries to sneak a smoke here and there, he eventually grows to like living under the widows protection. He proves this point when he says, “Living in a house, and sleeping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit.” (Twain 1211) He enjoyed his new life of modern comfort until his father kidnapped him and took him to live in a cabin with him. At first, Huck enjoyed his new setting and life in the cabin, but eventually he started to grow sick of being locked up for long periods of time. He began to get annoyed at seeing his father getting drunk and violent all the time. He says, “But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hickry, and I couldnt stand it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in.” (Twain 1216).
Life on the river was also good at first, but it also became tiresome for Huck. He liked the sense of freedom that he had while he was on the river with Jim, he didnt have to go to school nor did he have any rules that he had to live by. He didnt have to worry about what his father was going to do to him. However the river still set limits on their freedom, Jim and Huck were only able to travel at night because they were afraid of Jim being found and whenever they would