Huckleberry Finn: Sweet Home Mississippi

Christian Morganstern once explained, home plate is non where you live, but where you understand yourself (Morgenstern 1). The transcendentalist finds his home, and thereof himself, not in civilization, but in nature. In Mark Twains Adventures of huckleberry Finn, huck runs away from his civilized home to the multiple sclerosis River to seek refuge. Much like Thoreau going to Waldens pond to leakage the corruption of society, Huck finds comfort on the river. Only when he goes ashore does the peace and tranquility of the River get interrupted by batch and society.Ironically, they affect down the Mississippi toward the corrupt slave culture of the pre-Civil War South. The journey on the river symbolizes Hucks escape from the im chasteity of society into an idealistic, or utopian home on the raft where he can trail his own moral beliefs man the due south direction represents the ultimate inescapability of society. Although the Mighty Mississippi represents Hucks sanctuary, it i ronically propels Jim and him southward toward the very slave culture they be trying to escape.Resembling Marlows adventure on the Thames in Joseph Conrads The Heart of Darkness, the Mississippi transports Huck toward sliminess. While traveling into the Heart of Darkness, the air was glowering above Gravesend, and farther back pacify seemed condensed into mournful gloom, brooding motionless over (Conrad 1). Although the circumstances differ, the idea that they are traveling down hints that they are bound for hell or in the direction of evil. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the evil they are headed towards is slavery.As they travel down the river, the world around them becomes increasingly chaotic. In the antebellum South, Huck witnesses this disarray first cave in when Colonel Sherburn shoots Boggs. Sherburn explains to Huck that people in the South think they are braver than any other peoplewhereas theyre precisely AS brave, and no braver. Why dont juries hang murderer s? Because theyre afraid the mans friends will shoot them in the back, in the darkand its just what they WOULD do (Twain 149). This passage is Twain making a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.He vicariously speaks finished Sherburn, a Northerner, to convey with judgments of the corrupted South. As Huck travels further South, Twain However, as long as Huck and Jim stayed away from civilization, they were untouched by the evils of society. This suggests that maybe it is not the direction they are headed, but quite the people who lived upon the shores that are evil. As long as they stay on the raft, their own little lifeboat, Huck and Jim were untouched by the wickedness that dwelled around them.Thoreau, a Transcendental author, reinforces this reverence for nature when he explains that genius is not our foe, but an ally, not a dark force to be beaten back, but a marvelous force to be admired (Garner 1). Nature acted as a sanctuary for Huck, and he mat up more at home on the Mississipp i than with the unethical people of society. Whenever Huck leaves his raft, his symbolic Walden sanctuary, and came to shore, he ran was faced with the corruption of society. The first time this occurred is when they met the King and the Duke.Not long after, Huck realizes that these liars warnt no kings nor dukes, at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds, but puts up with them for Jims protection (Twain 128). These two men would put on shows and con people out of their money and then run away. As soon as Huck could, he planned on leaving them behind so Jim and he could go back to their halcyon times on the river. In addition, when floating down the river Huck is able to define his own moral philosophy away from the pressures of society.The river is not just an unknowing, unfeeling body of water, but becomes the catalyst to assist Huck with his moral growth. He learns that a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience and that he should listen himself and not th e ways of his more civilized elders (Hammond 3). Over the coarse of the novel, Huck finds a home and his morals while traveling down the Mississippi River. Although the people on the shores try to civilize and make him conform to their evil ways, he refuses because the river has become his asylum.