Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The River (Discussion Topic)

Do you have ideas or insights regarding the river? If so, please share them in a comment. Remember to read the other comments before posting your own so that you can engage with the ideas already put forth. Also, remember to use specific examples from the novel and quotations (with page numbers, of course!) whenever possible.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:


What is the significance of the Mississippi River in the novel? Is the river a place
of peace or of danger? How do the main characters’ perspectives on the river
change, depending on whether they are on the raft or on the riverbank? How does the meaning of the river itself change as Huck and Jim travel further south? How is the river important to the story or to the characters? What does the river represent?

47 comments:

  1. When reading the novel, I thought that the Mississippi River coincided with the situations that Huck and Jim face on their journey. In the early chapters, Huck first discovers the beauty of the river after running away from his abusive father. He feels an overwhelming sense of freedom and relief when he runs away, and he continues to feel liberated when he is sailing across the river on his raft for the first time. “I took a gap and a stretch and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it’s a still night” (42). The peacefulness of the river embodies a soft pleasure that Huck experiences when he escapes from his father and when he begins his great adventure. The river continues to appear tranquil when Huck meets Jim and learns about Miss Watson’s plan to sell Jim up the river. The consistent motion of the river proves that Huck and Jim would maintain a stable and strong relationship while on their journey. However, as the two travel down the river, it becomes rockier and more dangerous, and the conflicts that the two face when coming across different villages and people (such as the king and the duke) become more apparent to the two.

    The trouble Huck and Jim face are not only symbolized by the river, but also by nature itself. In Chapter 19, Huck and Jim meet the Duke of Bridgewater and King Louis XVII, and at first they did not express any worry in taking along the two men. However, the following chapter shows a chaotic uprising in the balance of nature. “Toward the night, it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning was squirting around…was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that” (167). The disaster that has arisen in nature would soon impact the relationship between the four explorers.

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  2. I think the river was a sort of escape for Huck. He thought of it as a way out an never ending road to no where in particular. To him it could be both calming and relaxing as well as an adventure of dangerous fun. The river represents everything Huck wants, so being Huck, he goes and gets it.

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  3. The Mississippi river as seen in Huckleberry Finn exemplifies the desire of Huck and Jim to free themselves of the various problems they encounter by the simple act of floating downstream. Many of us would visualize such an act as nonchalant and unhurried but by doing so, Mark Twain reminds us of the flow of time unique to the communities established along the banks of the Mississippi river. In such a place where the perpetual current of the wide waters brings down logs, barges, skiffs, and other miscellaneous flotsam, the time experienced by the characters syncs with the slow but steady drift that will always bring something new to them whether they’re on or off the river.
    Not only does the river serve Huck and Jim’s purposes but also accommodates the needs of many characters, including the loggers, robbers, and swindlers encountered along the way. As the stories of these various characters overlap with the protagonists, we find how other characters also use the river for their own purposes and livelihoods. Sometimes this conflicts with Huck and Jim’s idea of the river as freedom, particularly near the end when the swindlers boarded and occupied their raft despite Huck’s attempts to escape down the river without them.

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  4. I agree with Brian that the river symbolized the troubles that Huck and Jim encountered with the snags and rapids and steamboat, but I also think it was free place, a road leading somewhere in the future. A way to live quietly and peacefully while watching the everyday life of everyone else slide by. Each time they come past a town they kind of pass by normal peoples life and just watch the laundry getting hung and the cotton getting picked. And with their travels things begin to change. The accents the boats the people. They live a carefree life on their raft and watch everybody else's troubles pass by. It's as though their walking through all these peoples lives without being at all involved in them.

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  5. In the beginning, the river seems to represent endless possibilities. Huck doesn't know where it leads, it could lead anywhere, taking him to any path in life that he wishes to follow. Huck seems to want the river to lead him to a completely fresh start. He cuts all ties to the widow, to his father, even to his wealth, so that he can have a new beginning wherever the river takes him.

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  6. Im going to agree with everyone and say that the river is a symbol for being free. Both Huck and Jim are not in control of their lives, and when they run away they have to use the most efficient means of travel, which brings them to almost anywhere they want, and opportunity is somewhat a form of freedom. Freedom can also be a life without restrictions; a river isn’t under any sort of control or restriction from a larger power, like what Huck and Jim experience once they are free from authority.

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  7. I would like to connect the discussion topics of lying/storytelling and the river. Throughout the novel, I found that many times Huck, Jim, and Tom (if Tom was present in the section), had no need to lie to people while on the river. They were free from their problems and didn't have to worry. I think there were only a few situations where they did lie, for example when they needed to manipulate a ferry captain traveling down the river. Huck came aboard and tricked the captain into thinking his family had died in a wreck. "Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide, there, we couldn't make nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help, somehow. I was the only one that could swim; so I made a dash for it, and Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing... Now if you'll go, and--" (90). I noticed that this was a rare situation, for Huck to be lying on the river. Again, he makes up an outrageous story! But I found it more common for him to be making this stories on land, where it was riskier for Huck to be caught, and also much riskier for Jim. I also agree with the idea that the river is a place where Huck and Jim can be free, even from lies, manipulation, and distrust.

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  8. Hi my name is Ian Gonzer and I'm going to be a freshman at Maybeck in the fall. I'm excited and a little nervous about joining your school, but I think it's going to be fun. I too agree with all your statements that it symbolizes Huck's troubles, but i also think that it could be connected to his mind at the same time. For example, as he is considering the idea of escape from Pap's shanty and is coming up with a plan to do so, the river floods, as if his mind is full from the thought of freedom and the plans of escape. Then the river "gave" him a canoe which he, at practically the very moment he saw it, decided to use in his getaway (37 and 38). The canoe could represent the successful idea of using it to escape.

    Or when Huck and Jim are separated by the fog (99), Huck is paddling around the river confused because he can't see where he's going and the voice that's calling to him seems to keep changing it's position in accordance to Huck. It's in front of him then behind to the right then to the left then in front to the right then behind again etc. The fog could represent how his mind is clouded and how his sense of sight and knowledge of where he and the voice are on the river are almost completely nonexistent.

    When Huck and Jim are staring out over the water (156-158), they are calm and carefree. How Huck described the river and all that's on and around it in such a specific, refined, and detailed way led me to believe that the river represented him in that it seemed as relaxed as he was.

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  9. In Huckleberry Finn I think that the river is not just contained to its banks. The river is in the towns that they visit, the storms that assail them, the people they meet, and the cultures they are thrown in. Everything revolves around the river. The river is Huck’s and Jim’s transportation, protection, and food source. They depend on it completely and are at its mercy. When they are on the river it is in complete control of their lives. The rivers is a symbol for Jim’s hope of freedom and of Huck’s escape to freedom and adventure but as the river winds in snake like turns, so does the goodness the river grants them and the troubles it causes them. When the river splits Huck and Jim up it causes them to miss their destination, Cairo, Jim’s only certain chance at freedom, “when it was day light, here was the clear Ohio water in shore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy. So it was all up with Cairo”. (143) Jim has the most important thing in his life, his chance at freedom taken from him by the river. The river has the power to change your life.

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  10. The river is a symbol of the road to freedom and the raft is a symbol of positive energy. Huck talks about the importance of the river throughout the novel, and how much the river influences his and Jims lives. The river is their tool to escape and the reason for their strong friendship. The river allows Huck to see past the color or Jims skin, and as a result creates a respectful and valued friendship. The raft in addition to the river forces the characters to be kind and respectful to one another. Huck says “It took away all the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it would have been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards others” (165). Huck is expressing the importance of creating a safe and comfortable raft for all. This shows the power of the raft and river and how they work together to create these positive feelings and warm environment. This is important for both Huck and Jim because it helps them reach their goal and nurtures them through the process.

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  11. It’s obvious that the Mississippi River provides both Huck and Jim with freedom. Huck is provided with freedom from Pap’s abuse and from the rigid religious lifestyle of the widow Douglass, while Jim is provided with freedom from slavery and from the possibility of being sold. But the river also provides them with the ability to view society and its problems from an outside point of view.
    This outside viewpoint also has a deep effect on Huck’s feelings about helping Jim escape. He debates the morality of his decision to help Jim throughout the book, but after thinking back on his experiences with Jim during their journey along the river, Huck decides that he must help Jim: “And I got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time…and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind.” (269-270)
    The leisurely lifestyle provided by the river separated Huck from the biases of society, which allowed him to become friends with Jim despite his race. So the river played a large role in the antislavery message of the book.

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  12. Founding a novel on a river allows the structure of the story to mimic that of the river and flow more easily. It offers a constantly changing story and requires the reader to re-orient often. Mark Twain recognized this, and proceeded to base the majority of the action in Huckleberry Finn on North America's largest river system, the Mississippi. I would like to propose that we might reconsider the lens of the story by defining Huck's journey as a river. Of course, his journey with Jim is defined by the Mississippi, but the very nature of Huck's journey is by no means a traditional linear tale. It is in fact very transient (in regard to the characters they meet, the driver of their journey, the emotional plane, the territory, the themes and social rules), as a river is. At certain points, it is unclear whether the story is entirely honest, and may slow down the reader, and at others it is a completely lucid and believable narrative with a fast pace. It meanders, and it flows through occasionally deep, occasionally shallow ideas. In the beginning, Huck finds himself to be a young person raised by a pair of 'proper' women whom he cannot truly connect to, and for a short while, his derelict father who appears to have been mostly absent for Huck's upbringing. This leaves Huck with very few emotional anchors to the place he lives, which I call spiritually homeless. He encounters true joy when he's able to scamper around in the wilderness with the mischievous Tom Sawyer gang, and feels free when he is on the move. I would further argue that Huck feels at home on the river because it is such a changeable environment, which is more familiar to him than the predictability and order of the proper life that Miss Watson and the widow belong to (3), and more reliable than his absent father.

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  13. For Huck and several other characters, such as the King and Duke, the river acts as an escape route that they can use to get away from whatever trouble they have encountered on land. In some cases this trouble may be something as simple as boredom, but Huck has also used it to escape from being imprisoned by his father among other things. However the River isn’t always a reliable way to escape as it carries it’s own dangers. The way I see it the river is kind of like a back alley; one can duck into it to get away from whatever is chasing them, but once inside there are other hidden dangers that may jump out. The river can also be seen as a symbol for life in general and all of its little unexpected twists and turns. Even if everything seems like it’s going well something unexpected might occur to throw you completely off track. A big example of this in the book is when because of the fog Huck and Jim don’t make the turn on to the Ohio River. At first everything seems to be going well and the two are making all sorts of plans about what they’re going to do once the y get to Cairo, but when the fog comes in and they get separated they miss the turn and because of this their lives are drastically changed.

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  14. One could argue that the river is the most important part of Twain’s novel, as it is the central highway that guides the protagonists on their adventure. For Jim, it is a path that leads to his freedom from slavery, a route that will give him a better life. On the raft, and thereby the river, Jim is not a slave; he is in charge of his destiny, an actual person. On land, Jim is seen to be nothing more than a possession and less than a human. It is not so much a shift in perspective that Huck and Jim experience, but a shift in class and position. While Huck is on the river, he feels more at ease, saying, “there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy comfortable on a raft” (155).

    The river continues to be a route for the character’s journey, up until they flow past their destination. At this point in the adventure, the river is no longer a key to their goal; instead, they simply follow it, as if it were their life. And while they live off of and from the river, it is not always a safe place. When there are people boating about on the river, Huck and Jim hide their raft in the rushes. At night, their raft can be rammed in half by steamboats (130-131). It is a place of safety and escape for Jim and Huck. There are still times when it can be a place where Huck can be contemplative. The river is important as their adventures and lives are carried out on the river. If there were no river, there would be no raft; the novel is, after all, about male friendships and adventures on the Mississippi.

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  15. I personally think that the Mississippi river was Huck's way to freedom and it was also the river where he actually felt safe enough from getting caught by anyone. It also represents the time that both Jim and Huck spent together having fun, laughing and enjoying each others company. One reason I think that the Mississippi river is a safe place for Huck is because no one puts in the effort to try and follow them when they escape from trouble,and second it's a peaceful place where people won't bother him about his raft, or the fact that Jim being a runaway slave. An evidence that supports my point is on pg 258: Huck says " Out with you Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we're shut of them!" Now in this quote Huck escapes from the frauds and declares that he is safe once he gets to the raft on his way to the river which represents his happiness to be running away to his freedom which is the river.

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  16. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the river is where Huck and Jim are able to live simply; just eating, sleeping, fishing and talking, and land is where all of their adventures take place. The story is mostly made up of miniature adventures that Huck and Jim have to deal with, and they are connected to each other through the river. After each adventure, Huck and Jim get back on the raft and float down the river until they get pulled into another adventure: “I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all” (155). What Huck and Jim are both saying is not that a raft is the best home, they mean that being on the river, away from all of the chaos that has been taking place, is the most ideal place they could imagine living. As homes often are, the raft is where Huck and Jim run away from their problems to relax, and literally leave their problems behind. This however is not always the perfect solution, because it lets Huck and Jim run away from the messes they have made in each town without helping solve the problems that the townsfolk will have to deal with.

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  17. O'tay what I think da river does in the novel is it serves as an escape from the life that Huckleberry Finn is stuck in. The author uses da river not only as a means as transportation for Huck down da river but as away for Huck to be free. Da river starts off by giving Huck his way to freedom. It is his escape from a part of his life that he is unhappy with. The life where he is always on a seesaw between living a life of rightness with Miss Watson where he is enrolled in school and goes to church. On the other end of the seesaw is a world where Huck life as a bamf living out in the world as a mountain man fending for him self finding food and dealing with an abuses father,Pap. Da river lets him live a life that fits right between the two worlds, just like da river is in the story. Huck gets to have the freedom of the wildness live that he had with his father, Pap, while at the time giving the freedom that come from being released from oppression. Not only does da river give the best parts from Paps life if give that best parts from Miss Watson. Huck is allowed to be the “good boy” that he is. He is allow to do any reading that he wants, talk about any of the thing that he learned about in school, he is also allow to be polite when he see fit and not have to face any retaliation.

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  18. Huck compares human emotion to the behavior of the river and riverbanks twice in the same chapter, which I found to be an important part of the way the river influences Huck. When Huck realizes that he really admires the nieces being fooled, he decides to turn in the his crooked acquaintances. He starts to tell Mary Jane about the trick that the King and Duke are pulling. Clemens writes: “ I jolted her up, like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, “(239). Shoal water is the area of the river that is shallow because of a sandbar or something of that kind. It’s dangerous to navigate, and Huck likens this to the danger of navigating through his explanation; Huck has told her the hardest part, he now just needs to fill in the details to prove what he’s said( and get to the deeper and safer parts of the river).

    When the new Harvey Wilks comes to town,the king is posed with having to describe the tattoo on his dead “ brother”. This comes as quite a blow because the King knows nothing about the dead man’s tattoo. Huck describes the King trying to avoid acting as if he is unaware of the tattoo: “ Blamed if the king didn’t have to brace up mighty quick, or he’d a squashed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so sudden” (255). Instead letting his facade collapse, the king secures the situation even though he is in an unstable position; this position is, to Huck, similar to having a river carve out one’s dirt foundations from underneath one.
    For most, if not all of his life, Huck has lived near “the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand”(8). Huck’s closeness to this huge aspect of his landscape ends up affecting the way he views social interactions.

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  19. 1ST PART
    In previous posts quite a few people have mentioned how the river is an opportunity for freedom and also it is a symbol of freedom, but that view seems to give the river a patina of happiness. The river is dangerous and unpredictable and holds obstacles that control the decisions and actions that both Huck and Jim make. The definition of freedom is “exemption from an unpleasant or onerous condition” or “the capacity to exercise choice; free will” (The American Heritage College Dictionary). These definitions of freedom contradict the notion that Huck’s experience on the river was “free.” Rather, it was a difficult journey that did not always allow them to exercise the choices they wanted to make.

    For example, the river creates a huge obstacle when Jim and Huck get caught in the fog and end up passing Cairo, the city that told them where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi river. Huck describes the horror of being separated from Jim in the fog, “I see the fog closing down and it made me so sick and scared I couldn’t budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me–and then there warn’t no raft in sight; you couldn’t see twenty yards” (99). Huck is overwhelmed by the fog that descends upon him and separates him (in the canoe) and Jim (in the raft) from each other, and ultimately turns out worse when they come to the realization that they passed Cairo. After searching for Cairo for a couple of days Huck says “we went by Cairo in the fog that night” (129). The fog created an obstacle that restricts them from pursuing their choice to continue down the Ohio River. Such restrictions are the opposite of freedom. This specific incident demonstrates that the river is not really freedom nor provided them with the ability to have freedom because of the negative aspects it holds.

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  20. 2ND PART
    In many ways the turmoil of the river becomes a symbol of life. Life is a bumpy road that is unpredictable, beautiful, and dangerous. The foggy night on the river is a great example of a negative aspect of life, but there are also positive aspects that show through. The positive aspects are represented in the river when Huck describes the beauty of the river when the sun is rising.
    "The river softened up, away off, and warn’t black any more, but gray and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods…then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers…and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!" (157)
    The pure beauty and serenity that Huck experiences while watching the sun rise over the Mississippi is like a beautiful moment that occurs in a lifetime, one you would never forget. The river symbolizes the path of life because life has many ups and downs, good times and bad times, and beautiful and ugly times. The pathway of life is also reflected through the river by the choices that Huck makes on the river because they affect the direction that he takes physically. In everyday life, people make choices that determine the path they travel on through life.

    Another parallel between life and the river is the ever-changing shape of the river and the way that life seems to be manipulated so it is always different and never concrete. Michael Ditmore mentioned how the river changed shape over time with the currents that rounded the banks so the structure changed. These changes symbolize people getting older, and the storms that shape the banks quicker and bring snags represent conflicts and struggles that happen in life. The fluctuating uncertainty that the river manifests is a perfect symbol of life.

    Huck Finn’s adventures on the Mississippi river and the ever-changing state of the river itself are representations of the path through life. The uncertainty and the dangers and the serenity all represent aspects of life, but in this way the negative aspects also contradict the claims that the river represents freedom. To be free for some people is to not experience the woes of life like obstacles and unpredictability, but the river holds all of these aspects along with the beautiful features too.

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  21. I would like to add to what Miles was saying before. I think that the river and the raft are a huge part of the novel because the raft is what transports them to adventure after adventure but also because the river is a place of safety for Jim and Huck. When they are on the raft on the river, Huck seems much more calm and relaxed. It is a much more safe way of travel for them since they aren’t always running into people and having to lie about what they are doing. One thing I noticed about when they are on the river is that Huck is really aware of his natural surroundings. He appreciates and marvels at the beauties of nature. For example, when he is on the river and it starts to rain, he thinks, “It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby” (59). Another time, Huck and Jim are on the raft in St. Louis looking up at the stars, and Huck says, “The fifth night, we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up” (79). The river seems to calm and relax Huck into a state where he can just enjoy his surroundings without worrying about if they will get caught and sent home.

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  22. The river has many sides to it but in the begging we see the best side of it. The river gives Huck and Jim the chance to escape that they both desperately need. For Huck it is an escape from his father. For Jim it is an escape from slavery and the chance to becoming a free man eventually with his family. The river is what gives them both the possibility of escape and saves them many times. First it gives the canoe to Huck giving him the chance to escape which also gives Jim the chance to escape latter.

    The river also provides for both Huck and Jim. In the begging when Huck couldn’t make a fire to cook he was fed because food was being sent down the river, if he had been escaping on land he still would be stuck hungry. Huck and Jim also live of the river with mainly eating fish. The river also makes it possible for Huck and Jim to escape because of the logs that are sent down the river so that they can make a raft to live on.

    The river is not totally pure and filled with good intentions. One of the first times that we see the scary side of the river is when they find the crashed river boat. In an attempt to be adventures Huck decides to board it, the first sign that the river can be dangerous is when they realize that the river has taken the canoe, there only transportation with all there supplies. The river shows how dangerous it can be when Huck and Jim see the wreckage of the river boat they had been on coming down the river, and both of them knew that the two men couldn’t have gotten off.

    The river has many sides some good like the fact that the river supplies them with food. Then some bad like the fact that because of the river they miss the point were the rivers combine leading them deeper and deeper into the south.

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  23. The river is a crucial part of the novel being all at once, vehicle, setting, character and indicator. The river forms the primary setting of the novel, but also serves as an instrument to move the characters through the story and to the rest of their lives. The story of the novel is much like the flow of the Mississippi. The “big straight river ahead”(80) is often rapid and raging, pulling churned up emotions and feelings downstream at a breakneck pace. Storms come and go, “with a power of thunder and lightning and, the rain pour(ing) down in a solid sheet”(80) Sometimes the river is a wide expanse bordered by countryside, lazily drifting it’s way to some far off destination. Twain ever so deliberately writes this flow into his novel. His writing also reflects the way the river sometimes finds slow spots and will pool in areas that are a little deeper than others. At these points throughout the novel, the story focuses in on a few people and their lives, only to resolve whatever is holding up the flow of the river and move on.

    The river has huge symbolism for the characters in the novel. A common significance of the river throughout the novel is that of freedom For Jim, the river is a path where he is walking in between being actually free and released from bondage, and from being sold into a situation where he will be treated poorly and oppressed. Jim’s first impetus to take to the river is when he “hear ole missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to orelans”(53)
    According to Huck, “other places seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”(155) Huck is clearly enamored with the freedom that comes from being in a raft on the river. Huck’s freedom through the river is the freedom to choose what kind of life he will live. When the widow was trying to “sivilize” him, or when pap made him live like he did, and tried to make him forget all education, Huck was being treated like a child, and thus both of the situations bothered him to some extent. When Huck is living with the widow, and a body shows up that appears to be that of Pap’s, Huck is at first glad, and then disappointed when he realizes it is not Pap. Huck mentions “. . . I Judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn’t” (14) Huck clearly has mixed feelings about the people he has grown up with, and sees the river as a bringer of opportunity for himself.
    Huck’s life has always been based around this river, as he has grown up on its banks, thus for Huck the river is a context with which to view people’s social interactions and feelings, as previously discussed by Sabine. Huck’s feelings of loneliness are often mirrored by the way he talks about the river, as on page 146. Huck’s life is without connection to the world he has left, so to him, it is easy to see the river as “perfectly still-just like the whole world was asleep” (156) Huck is watching the sunrise, and the stillness and isolation from “sivilization” is really clear.

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  24. The river in the novel is oftentimes Huck’s entire world. For however long the novel encompasses, it is his home, he practically lives on the raft with Jim. For the first part of the novel, the river brings a sense of peacefulness and belonging, almost like a summer vacation in a way. Calm, bringing with it safety from Huck’s father and slave traders as they travel farther and farther away from their hometown. However, after they pass the Ohio river and enter deeper and deeper south, the world around them suddenly becomes a much more dangerous place for Jim, and the river suddenly becomes much more than a home—it becomes their only chance of survival. When they are taken hostage by the king and the duke, the river loses its feeling of calm and safety, and they are now in a place of uncomfort and danger at the hands of the two frauds. However, once Jim is sold to the Phelps’, the river seems to pretty much disappear from the story altogether, for a time.
    All in all, Huck has grown up on the river, and ironically, it seems that he views it with more respect than the Widow, sometimes.

    -Mari

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  25. I agree with what Brian said; I think the river seems to represent Huck and Jim’s journey. Because Huck begins his journey on the river right after escaping from his father, he connects the river to freedom. He mentions this several times throughout the novel: “We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft,” (155). Whenever Huck feels at ease and is generally happy with the state of things, the river is referred to as a calm place of beauty and freedom. In turn, when things have gotten worse in Huck’s journey, or are about to get worse, the river becomes more intense, scary and/or violent, often through storms or people they meet along the river. This is shown when Huck and Jim find the shipwreck along with the men in it, when they get separated in the storm, when they find the “monstrous long raft that…carried as many as thirty men,”(106), and several other occasions. Therefore, I think the state river represents the mood of what is happening and what is about to happen.

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  26. In response to Nayani's point about the river having multiple sides, I believe that the river's role often changes and can be a way to freedom and security for Huck and Jim, but I can also bring danger and trouble. Many time throughout the book the river is described as a sanction for the characters, after Huck thinks he has escaped the King and Duke, two rapscallions, he says, “away we went, a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us” (259). This quote shows how the river makes them feel safe and free. The characters feelings change about the river when it is daylight because they must hide and camp out do to the danger of being caught. Often the river is so big that they can make a hidden camp and enjoy breakfast in peace. At the river is mostly safe but Huck and Jim do encounter troubles like other boats and thieves that are also finding the river to be a haven to them. As the story continues, like others before me have stated, the story flows like the river and new adventures are presented to the characters. The river symbolizes a new life and new opportunities for the protagonists. As they move farther down the river the stronger their bond grows and the closer they are to a free life.

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  27. The river in Huckleberry Finn is almost always a place of serenity. I noticed that whenever the characters are on the river, there is a feeling of timelessness and a sense of intense beauty. The two events that clash with this are when the adventure on the wrecked steamboat (P. 80) and when the raft is smashed in the night by another steamboat (P. 130) but there events only modify the this idea. Both steamboats are external sources, separate from the river itself. They are extensions of the shorebound parts of the book, and thus carry some of that danger. The parts of the book on land, and I don’t include the section on the island with Jim, are usually tense or dangerous in some way. I suspect that Samuel Clemens, as a former steamboat pilot, felt this way about the river, and that these are his feelings about the river.

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  28. The river in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn symbolizes freedom for Huck and Jim. It is a way of escaping from the controlling worlds they live in. Slavery for Jim and forced education and manners for Huck. Although the river constantly symbolizes their freedom, or a journey towards freedom, the meaning of the word evolves as they travel. At first it is a fantasy, a vague and simplistic idea of freedom. Huck believes that all of his problems can be solved by traveling down the river. His only thoughts are of leaving the environment his is in at the moment, escaping his drunkard father, and living without the constrictions of family. Huckleberry says that "We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft." Huck's view of the raft and the river is a place of freedom where he is free to live life as he wishes, but he does come to realize that that is not all it is. Leaving the watchful eyes of the widow and the judge puts him in harms way, an he comes to be able to deal with it during his journey but also to rethink his definition of freedom. In the end freedom is not a vague dreamy concept, but an idea that is not totally good or totally bad, it is just a place that gives him the chance to decide what he believe to be good or bad, and to make decisions accordingly.

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  29. To me the river seems to represent life. It is just everything. It is good and bad, safe and dangerous, free yet constrictive. It is constantly moving forward on to new things. Huck and Jim use the river to keep going no matter what. After a bad experience they simply ride the river down to the next adventure. When they are on the river they don’t have any idea of what is going to come next. It is always hopeful for the two of them when they are on the river because they are going towards something new that has the chance of being something good. The river allows them to never be stuck because just like life it never stops. In life opportunities can be missed and that is true on the river as well. The biggest example of this is, of course, passing Cairo and the Ohio River in the fog. Missing this one pathway of the river leads them to an entirely different passage of life. Huck says, “When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water in the shore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy! So it was all up with Cairo. We talked it all over. It wouldn’t do to take to the shore; we couldn’t take the raft upstream, of course”(129). Once Huck and Jim pass Cairo they have no choice but to keep going along with the river until it takes them somewhere that can help them. They missed their chance and now they can’t get it back. One missed opportunity takes away their only destination and leaves them with no choice but to go where life, and the river, takes them.

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  30. At first when Huck goes off onto the river by himself, the river seems to represent a calmness or serenity because he no longer has to worry about education, the widow, his father, or much responsibility other than himself. Huck and Jim spend their daytimes in one place and relax, "Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; Then we sat down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound, anywheres-perfectly still." (156) Huck describes the calmness of the river with a very sincere feeling and enjoys the relaxation time that he has with Jim when there are not in motion. The river seems to calm Huck because he feels that there is no real motion to it when he is resting in the daytime.

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  31. For Huck, the river represents both adventure and a way of escaping Pap, but for Jim the river provides protection from more serious and life threatening dangers. Huck does not have to take their trip as seriously because he does not have a fear that he is being chased while if Jim gets caught the consequences would be much worse. Jim sees the water as a place of safety and protection. Even when a steamboat breaks their raft, Jim decides it would be safer in the river. When Huck finds him he says, “some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields en dey tuck me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can’t track me on accounts o’ de water.” (150) Huck does not have the same need for protection from the river. When the raft breaks he immediately goes onto land and abandons Jim. When he is reunited with Jim Huck is reminded of the comfort he gets from both the river and from Jim. When they set off again on the raft Huck says, “It’s lovely to live on a raft.” (158) For Jim the river is connected to a destination, it is a way to get to freedom and to a find a place he can call home. Huck lacks Jim’s focus and instead treats the river as his home base in between adventures.

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  32. The Mississippi River is used constantly within the great American novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is used not only as a real and substantial river, but also as a metaphor for the emotional journey taken by the two main characters, Huckleberry Finn and Jim. The best part about this is a river, so it can literally portray any mood imaginable. It can be calm, excited, slow, can seem sad and dreary, can seem alive, angry, and can even portray tension. I mean, it’s a river. It flows. It can be cold or warm, calm or insane, whatever you want it to be. To come across a metaphor like this and be able to call it your own and use it creatively must be a writer’s jackpot. I mean the author can literally write anything he wants and have it magically relate to this river. But it’s a river! It already can resemble anything. So after a point it seems like Mark Twain got a little lazy and didn’t want to think of a new metaphor. That’s as simple as I would put it. It was recurring and unnecessary and to have it brought up in the book more than once was a straight up mistake.

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  33. Most of the book takes place on the river, but the river is more than a setting, it is also the reason that Huck and Jim are able to treat their situation so uniquely. In several cases, the river is their method of transport away from their problems. Their initial flight is a good example of this, as is their travels with the King and Duke. The King and Duke hop from town to town, conning the people out of their money. “They tackled Missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything” (265) The river leaves no trace of them as they float downstream, away from their troubles. In this way People on the river have a sense of freedom that was not present when they were living on land. The wild raftsmen are a good example of this: “All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle… …and beating his breast with his fist, saying ‘Look at me, Gentlemen!’ “. (109) This kind of excitement and action is never shown on land in the book. The raftsmen, carrying on like this, are behaving however they feel like it. They are enjoying their feeling of freedom that the river gives them.
    The sense of freedom and change is preferred over their slower based lives on land. This sense of freedom is an important element that Mark Twain uses to keep things fresh throughout the story. Rather than having a rigid setting, the book keeps Huck and Jim on the move, never staying in any place for too long, lest the reader become bored with that particular scenario. In this way, the river gives freedom to not only Huck and Jim, but also to the Author as well. I was somewhat disappointed near the end when Mark Twain left the raft, the river and their adventures without a thought when Huck went to rescue Jim from his capture. For me, the river segments of the story were the best, the tall tales of the Raftsmen, the crooks on the Wreck, the escapades of the King and Duke. Compared to the danger and excitement of the river, the fooling around with Tom Sawyer was very anti-climactic to me. I too, preferred the sense of freedom over the slower-paced parts on land.

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  34. For Jim and Huck, the Mississippi river is a great symbol of freedom. In the very beginning of the novel, Huck is able to use the river to escape the abuse of his father. Also, the river carries Jim to the Free states which he seeks. However, the river is also a dangerous place, due to the towns on its banks. Huck and Jim encounter criminals, wrecked ships and stolen goods. As the novel progresses, Huck and Jim meet the King and the Duke, two con men. The King and the Duke cause Huck and Jim to spend more time ashore. Though the river continues to offer a refuge from peril, it often merely effects the exchange of one bad situation for another. All of the dangers Huck and Jim face have to be looked at in the larger context of continuously floating down south to the slave states. Throughout the course of the book, the river changes from a symbol of freedom to a impeding danger for Jim and Huck

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  35. Huck’s journey downriver is mirrored and enhanced by his changing opinion of Jim and slavery in general. When Huck first takes to the river from Jackson Island, his views on slavery were considered pretty per-the-norm for his background. He sees black people as property, not as people. Jim’s original introduction is made in terms of Miss Watson: “Miss Watson’s big n---er, named Jim” (6), showing that Huck’s oppinion of Jim was that he was not a person.
    As they traveled on downriver together, however, Huck began to subconsciously treat Jim as a person rather than a piece of property. Their journey on the river reflected this change in a myriad of ways. The main example occurs when Huck and Jim lose each other in the fog and pass the mouth of the Ohio River. This represents a time of turbulence in Huck’s perceptions of black people, slavery, and Jim in particular. Shortly thereafter, Huck faces a moral dilemma in which he ultimately decides that his friendship with Jim is more important than the social pressures which urge him to view him as a criminal.
    When Huck leaves the river two miles below Pikesville, it represents his final decision on the matter of slavery: that it is bad, and Jim doesn’t deserve to be bound by it, even though Huck thinks he’ll “go to hell” (271) for it.
    The river in Huck Finn and Huck’s journey south on it represent and reflect his own emotional journey and coming-into-himself, in that he chose to do what he believed right, even at the expense of societal acceptance.

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  36. I agree on the point that the river represents escape and freedom for Jim and Huck Finn. Both Jim and Huck are running away from things and they are both physically escaping together, therefore right away it is an escape. Mentally they are both running away from there older lives as well. Jim said “I hear ole missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans…. (53)”. Jim is running from the prospect of being sold and Huck is running from his father. Huck said; “I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there (31)”. Both Huck and Jim both have their reasons to escape and there is no better way of doing so than the great Mississippi River.

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  37. The river isn't terribly free. It's like going from a prison to a waiting room. Sure, Huck and Jim are not confined by the situations they escaped, but the method of their escape is confining in itself. It's a one-way stream that hurls them into unpredictable and sometimes unavoidable situations over which they have little control. When they are trusting or adventurous, it usually leads to misfortune, like being trapped in a shipwreck with a band of murderers, the raft being taken over by a pair of con artists.
    The river is used as spacing between the episodes that form the story. Most of what happens on the raft is nothing at all. Jim and Huck are simply moving forwards to the next encounter. Although time on the river gets fewer words devoted to it, when specific lengths of time are given they can be quite long, vague and totally unremarkable: "Two or three days went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely"(156). Certainly Huck and Jim are happy on the raft, but this could be because every time they step off it, they find themselves in the midst of something worse.

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  38. Huck's relationship with the river is almost that of a human. Huck makes the river seem like it has human emotions. The river is place of peace for Huck and Jim i wouldn't necessarily say freedom. Whenever Huck and Jim are on the raft they are always naked, so maybe that symbolizes freedom on the river. The river is always the place where Huck and Jim aren't encountered with an obstacle of some sort. When they are on the river they just float by. However when the "Duke" and the "King" were on the raft with Huck and Jim were being bossed about in their peaceful little home. However Huck and Jim seemed to take it well because they knew that the raft was theirs and they seemed confident about their raft.

    When Huck refers to river river's behavior he usually uses humanizes the river making it seem like a host. Huck also talks about the river as if it was the best thing that ever happened to him For instance when Huck talks about how he thinks there is not a better place to be on a raft in the big peaceful river, he also says it is better to be on the river where no one bothers them.

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  39. I have a couple of things to say about the river, so I decided to post them separately because they're a bit conflicting.

    The Mississippi River in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is symbolic of the freedom it provides Huck and Jim. As the duo aimlessly follows the Mississippi River towards New Orleans they experience complete and utter freedom for the first time. Time no longer is of importance to them and the runaways may do as they please, living off of the river and buying or stealing what little it cannot provide them. Both Huck and Jim seek greener pastures and for a time it seems that they have found them on the river, where Jim is a slave no longer and Huck can be “sivilized” by no one. The two can dabble in adventures and meet new people but ultimately these experiences are just new chapters in their lives and they can always return to the river. Huck and Jim make the rules for their free lives, rules which match up with what they want, as they do when deciding what they are and aren’t allowed to steal from riverside residences. “Take it all around, we lived pretty high” (p. 80). Though around them are the more serious problems of slavery and poverty Huck and Jim live well, following the river and enjoying fortune while it lasts.

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  40. While Huck and Jim’s journey begins filled with infinite possibilities on the free and open river, it soon becomes something which is only a passage between unpleasant circumstances. Though the Mississippi River caries boy and ex-slave from their controlled pasts, it’s currents also carry them into increasingly bad situations. As Huck and Jim advance down the Mississippi they find themselves less able to take advantage of the calm safety of the river. This is true especially after they are joined by the Duke and King, whom Huck and Jim cannot seem to separate themselves from, despite their efforts. Huck and Jim’s inability to detach themselves from their unwanted companions eventually leads to the ultimate infringement upon Jim’s freedom, his reintroduction to slavery. Huck, with the help of Tom Sawyer, frees Jim for a second time and Jim seems to go off into the sunset, leaving Huck to his own devices once again, but with an important choice ahead of him. Huck tells his readers “I recon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” (p. 362)
    In many ways this shows the cyclic nature of the story, after all is said and done Huck only wants to return to his vagabonding. For him it is the travel that matters, for he has no specific destination in mind. It is not the river that is symbolic of freedom and adventure; it is the potential that a new journey holds.

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  41. The River represents freedom and an escape from the character’s unhappy lives and also presents endless options and adventures, which intrigues Huck to make a run for it. The plot and storyline of the book flows with the Rivers currents. When they are through in one spot it carries them onto the next and so the story continues. We first see this when Huck has been kidnapped by his father and is discontent with his life. He devises a plan to fake his own death and go down the River, and so begins the story. Again when Huck and Jim meet The King and The Duke they begin to get into a lot of trouble scamming people. When they are found out after playing a nasty trick they take to the River and it carries them away to safety and to the next town to scam, “We struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river” (198). The River is a place in which Huck, Jim and their companies can run to for safety in any tight situation. Without the river to carry them along the story would simply sit in one place. It brings them to new adventures and new obstacles but always provides an escape route in any sticky situation it may bring them to.

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  42. It seems to me that the farther away Huck and Jim gets from the river, the less lively nature appears to be. When the two get back on the river after the Grangerford and Shepherdson feud, they relax and Huck notices the river’s details:

    “Not a sound, anywheres – perfectly still – just like the whole world was asleep … then the river softened up, away off, and warn’t black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away – trading scows, and such things; and long, black streaks – rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far…” (156).

    The little details of the river make it seem alive. Though the river and the world “was asleep”, each sound and sight all contributes to make the river brimming with different details, which causes that environment to feel alive. On the other hand, when Huck is walking through the back country to find the Phelps’ home to rescue Jim, he describes how the land is so desolate and haunted:

    “I got there it was all still and Sunday-like … it seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering… it makes a body wish he was dead, too” (276).

    The back country “seem so lonesome”, and is because “everybody’s dead and gone”. What’s interesting is the reference to religion: “Sunday-like”, “spirits”… It makes the country seem haunted because of that.

    Though both surroundings are “still”, the liveliness and different energies brought from all the minor details in the river contrasts with the plain back country. So it seems that the farther you are from the river, the closer you are to being in an empty surrounding.

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  43. The river in this novel as well as in many other stories stands as an escape to a better future or location at that. For both Jim and Huck, the river stands as a key towards a new beginning away from their horrific lifestyle. The raft can best be described by Huck when he says, “ a raff is what I’s arter; it doan make no track.” (53), giving both characters a sense of ease while traveling. He also states, “We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft,” (155), which gives readers the vibe of freedom and happiness simply through the security of the raft. Although the river seems safe majority of the time during the adventure, there is also danger that lies with traveling on the river. For example in the daytime Huck “made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up, people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off.” (62) I find it very interesting how the characters freedom was more restricted in the daytime compared to at night, however, they never made it a big hold back towards their destination, rather as something they had to accept and work around in order to have their freedom. Overall, I strongly feel that the river gave the characters peace and strength throughout their journey to withstand some of the strong currents and unpleasant characters they bumped into.

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  44. The Mississippi River is continually associated with death in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The bodies of many of the characters who die over the course of the novel end up in the river, or, in Huck’s case, his body is thought to be in there. When people are looking for Huck’s body early on in the novel, they have many ways of going about it. Huck narrates, “You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top” (36). There are also more superstitious methods of trying to locate a body in the water. Huck continues to say, “Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there” (37). Since there are so many established methods of locating a body in the river, I would assume that finding dead people in the water is not an uncommon occurrence. This notion is further emphasized by the fact that death after death in the novel cumulates with a body in the river. Thus, the river is a common location for death and dead bodies.

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  45. The mighty Mississippi River represents a man’s life, how it twists and turns, and how it starts and ends. The river has many modes which Huck and Jim experience throughout their journey. Like life, the river switches rapidly and unexpectedly. Sometimes it is calm and serene “just like the whole world was asleep” (pg 156.) Other times it is entrapping and claustrophobic “with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall” shrouded in fog and hard to navigate (pg 102.) And other times it is choppy and dangerous like in the story of the haunted barrel where the river “ripped and roared around all night” (pg 117.) Each day brings new surprises and they meet many people as the wander down the river, as if progressing through their lives. On a grander scale, the river is also Heaven and Hell. Beyond the idea of a river stating some place high (the mountains) and ending some place low (the sea), it also goes North to South, cold to hot, freedom to slavery. The farther it progresses, the more misfortune befalls Huck and Jim. While they used to find money and supplies the eventually are hunted by mobs.

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  46. Both Huckleberry Finn and Jim the Mississippi River is a symbol of their freedom. Huckleberry Finn sees the river as an escape from his father and the widow. The river also is a symbol of Huck’s independence. After escaping from the chaotic town Huck explains what the river means to him “So in two seconds away we went a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us(183).” The river also isolates Huck from the chaos of his abusive father and the rest of the world. As for Jim, the river takes him away from slavery and leads him to the road of freedom. After Jim thinks that he and Huck have reached Cario, tearful and enthusiastically Jim tells Huck how grateful he is “Pooty soon I’ll be a shout’n for joy, en Ill say, it’s all on accounts o’Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t be free ef it hadn’t been for Huck; Huck done it(82).” In addition I also think that the river bonds Huck and Jim together because it isolates them from the world of slavery, stripping away the prejudice of color.

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  47. We know from many historical accounts that Mark Twain loved the Mississippi River. Twain wrote that “When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before--met him on the (Mississippi) river.” (Life on the Mississippi). This is where he first ‘met’ characters like Huck Finn, Jim, and Tom Sawyer, so it is only fitting that the river is a focal point of these character’s exploits in the novel. Huck and Jim use the river to escape from their own unique forms of enslavement, His father for Huck and Miss Watson for Jim. The river is both a symbol and a conduit for hope and freedom for the two characters and flows ill or well depending on the situation within the novel.

    It is only on the river do Huck and Jim ever feel fully at peace. When they first set out on their small raft down the Mississippi they are bewitched by the serenity of the water, Huck explains, “We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.” (78). This lackadaisical voyage gives a dream-like quality to Huck and Jim’s journey, representing the dream of freedom of a world where they can be carefree and not have to answer to a higher authority than themselves.

    Coming hand in hand with the river is the raft, the most important mode of transport to Huck and Jim. It also builds on the river’s allegory for freedom and independence, as Huck puts it, “We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft” (155). With a raft the two are free to go anywhere in the vast expanse of the Mississippi, just as a free man is able to go anywhere and become anything in his life.

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