Huckleberry Finn (character)
Encyclopedia
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

, who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. The story is set in the Town of "St...

and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...

. He is 12 or 13 years old during the former and a year older ("thirteen or fourteen or along there," Chapter 17) at the time of the latter. Huck also narrates Tom Sawyer Abroad
Tom Sawyer Abroad
Tom Sawyer Abroad is a novel by Mark Twain published in 1894. It features Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of Jules Verne-esque adventure stories.-Plot:...

and Tom Sawyer, Detective
Tom Sawyer, Detective
Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and Tom Sawyer Abroad . Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time...

, two shorter sequels to the first two books.

Biography

Huck is the son of the town's vagrant
Vagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...

 drunkard, "Pap" Finn. Sleeping on door-steps when the weather is fair, in empty hogsheads during storms, and living off of what he receives from others, Huck lives the life of a destitute vagabond. The author metaphorically names him "the juvenile pariah of the village." The author describes Huck as "idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad," qualities for which he was admired by all the children in the village, although their mothers "cordially hated and dreaded" him.

Huck is an archetypal innocent, able to discover the "right" thing to do despite the prevailing theology and prejudiced mentality of the South of that era. The best example of this is his decision to help Jim escape slavery, even though he believes he will go to "hell" for it.

His appearance is described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wears the clothes of full-grown men which he probably received as charity, and as Twain describes him, "he was fluttering with rags." He has a torn broken hat and his trousers are supported with only one suspender.

Huck's mother is dead, and Tom's Aunt Polly calls Huck a "poor motherless thing." Huck confesses to Tom in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that he remembers his mother and his parents' relentless fighting that only abated with her death.

Huck, as the son of an abusive alcoholic, is strongly opposed to liquor. Beyond this, however, he has a carefree life free from societal norms or rules, stealing watermelons and chickens and "borrowing" boats and cigars. Due to his unconventional childhood, Huck has received almost no education. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglas, who sends him to school in return for saving her life.

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Widow attempts to "sivilize" the newly wealthy Huck. Huck is kidnapped by Pap, but manages to fake his own death and escape to Jackson's Island, where he coincidentally meets up with Jim, a slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 who was owned by the Widow Douglas's sister, Miss Watson.

Jim is running away because he overheard Miss Watson planning to "sell him South" for eight hundred dollars. Jim wants to escape to Ohio, where he can find work to eventually buy his family's freedom. The two take a raft down the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...

 in the hopes of finding freedom from slavery for Jim and freedom from Pap and society's mores
Mores
Mores, in sociology, are any given society's particular norms, virtues, or values. The word mores is a plurale tantum term borrowed from Latin, which has been used in the English language since the 1890s....

 for Huck. They encounter many obstacles, and Jim is captured or sold several times throughout the novel.

In the end, however, Jim gains his freedom through Miss Watson's death, as she freed him in her will. Pap, it is revealed, has died in Huck's absence, and although he could safely return to St. Petersburg, Huck plans to flee west to Indian Territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...

.

In Tom Sawyer Abroad
Tom Sawyer Abroad
Tom Sawyer Abroad is a novel by Mark Twain published in 1894. It features Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of Jules Verne-esque adventure stories.-Plot:...

and Tom Sawyer, Detective
Tom Sawyer, Detective
Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and Tom Sawyer Abroad . Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time...

, the published sequels to Huck Finn, however, Huck is living in St. Petersburg again after the events of his eponymous novel. In Abroad, Huck joins Tom and Jim for a wild, fanciful balloon ride that takes them overseas. In Detective, which occurs about a year after the events of Huck Finn, Huck helps Tom solve a murder mystery.

Relationships

Huck is Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer
Thomas "Tom" Sawyer is the title character of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , Tom Sawyer Abroad , and Tom Sawyer, Detective .Sawyer also appears in at least three unfinished Twain works, Huck and Tom...

's closest friend. Their friendship is partially rooted in Sawyer's emulation of Huck's freedom and ability to do what he wants, like swearing and smoking when he feels like it. In one moment in the novel, he openly brags to his teacher that he was late for school because he stopped to talk with Huck Finn, something for which he knew he would (and did) receive a whipping. Nonetheless, Tom remains a devoted friend to Huck in all of the novels they appear in.

Jim
Jim (Huckleberry Finn)
Jim is one of two major fictional characters in the classic novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The book chronicles the journey of Jim and Huckleberry "Huck" Finn down the Mississippi River in the antebellum Southern United States. Jim is an adult African American who has escaped...

, a runaway slave that Huck befriends, is another dominant force in Huck's life. He is the symbol for the moral awakening Huck undergoes throughout Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Pap Finn is Huck's abusive, drunken, father who shows up at the beginning of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...

and forcibly takes his son to live with him. When present, Pap's only method of parenting is physical abuse. Although he seems derisive of education and civilized living, Pap seems to be jealous of Huck, and is infuriated that his son would try to amount to more than he did, and live in better conditions than he did.

Inspiration

The character of Huck Finn was based on Tom Blankenship, the real-life son of a sawmill laborer and sometime drunkard named Woodson Blankenship, who lived in a "ramshackle" house near the Mississippi River behind the house where the author grew up in Hannibal, Missouri
Hannibal, Missouri
Hannibal is a city in Marion and Ralls counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. Hannibal is located at the intersection of Interstate 72 and U.S. Routes 24, 36 and 61, approximately northwest of St. Louis. According to the 2010 U.S. Census the population was 17,606...

. The father of Huck, called "Pap" Finn is drawn possibly more from Jimmy Finn, a full-blown alcoholic who lived on the streets, and it is only through Twain's remembrances that Woodson is characterized as a drunkard. Twain left Hannibal and his boyhood at an early age and his memories of these people are colored by what he could have known and understood at the time, as a boy of less than 14 years old. Tom didn't attend school because there were no public schools at the time, and his family was too poor to send him to a private school. Left at loose ends in a busy household with six sisters and a mother who seems to have died when he was young, Tom was indeed "at liberty" most of the time.

The childhood friend Tom Blankenship as the inspiration for creating Huckleberry Finn was mentioned by Twain in his Autobiography: "In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person--boy or man--in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's." - Mark Twain's Autobiography
Mark Twain's Autobiography
Autobiography of Mark Twain or Mark Twain’s Autobiography refers to a lengthy set of reminiscences, dictated, for the most part, in the last few years of American author Mark Twain's life and left in typescript and manuscript at his death...

.

Huck's adventure is in part based on an incident that happened to Tom Blankenship's eldest sibling, his brother Benson, a teenage fisherman who had his own skiff. He aided a runaway slave in defiance of the law, spurning a probable reward to instead bring food and other items to the slave, who was hiding in the wilderness near the river over the course of a summer. Eventually, bounty hunters chased the slave onto a logjam where he drowned. Days later, Clemens and other local boys were exploring the logjam when the body was dislodged and sprang up from beneath the water violently, frightening the boys. Some critics have also connected certain traits of Benson Blankenship to the character Muff Potter, from Twain's novel Tom Sawyer, such as his owning a skiff and occasionally sharing his catch with the boys of the town, and mending their kites.

Tom Blankenship has passed from history with few solid clues as to his ultimate fate. His sister told Twain near the turn of the century that both of her brothers were dead, and local rumor says that Tom perished in a cholera epidemic, a number of which swept up the Mississippi river in the years after the Civil War. Twain himself told reporters that he heard that Tom moved to Montana and was a well-respected Justice of the Peace, but this is thought to be wishful thinking by some historians. Another Hannibal Mo., old timer related that Tom "left Hannibal for the penitentiary." Mention is made in the local newspapers that he was arrested for stealing food repeatedly in the early 1860s.

No death certificate has ever been located for Tom, but census records indicate that Benson moved to Texas and started a family alongside his uncles and cousins by the 1860s. This suggests that there may have been a period when Tom and his father Woodson were more or less alone in Hannibal, as the daughters all married or entered into service with local families. No record of Tom serving in any military during the civil war has emerged as of this date, either. A local was quoted as saying the family "played out" and disappeared from the area by the time the war was over. The ultimate truth seems to have passed into the unknowable realm, leaving us only with Twain's fiction.

Appearances

  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. The story is set in the Town of "St...

    (1876)
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...

    (1884)
  • Tom Sawyer Abroad
    Tom Sawyer Abroad
    Tom Sawyer Abroad is a novel by Mark Twain published in 1894. It features Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of Jules Verne-esque adventure stories.-Plot:...

    (1894)
  • Tom Sawyer, Detective
    Tom Sawyer, Detective
    Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and Tom Sawyer Abroad . Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time...

    (1896)
  • Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians - unfinished
  • Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy - unfinished

Portrayals

Actors who have portrayed Huckleberry Finn in movies and TV:
  • Lewis Sargent
    Lewis Sargent
    Lewis Sargent was an American film actor. He appeared in 80 films between 1917 and 1949.He was born and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:* Huckleberry Finn * Oliver Twist...

     (1920)
  • Junior Durkin
    Junior Durkin
    Junior Durkin, born Trent Bernard Durkin , was an American film actor from New York, New York. Durkin began his acting career in theater while a child. He entered films in 1930, and played the role of Huckleberry Finn in Tom Sawyer , and Huckleberry Finn...

     (1930 and 1931)
  • Jackie Moran (1938)
  • Donald O'Connor
    Donald O'Connor
    Donald David Dixon Ronald O’Connor was an American dancer, singer, and actor who came to fame in a series of movies in which he co-starred alternately with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule...

     (1938)
  • Mickey Rooney
    Mickey Rooney
    Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...

     (1939)
  • Eddie Hodges
    Eddie Hodges
    Eddie Hodges is a United States former child actor and recording artist who left show business as an adult.-Early life and career:Hodges was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, U.S. Hodges traveled to New York City with his family in 1952...

     (1960)
  • Roman Madyanov
    Roman Madyanov
    - Filmography :# 1973 — Hopelessly Lost# 2007 — 12# 2007 — The Irony of Fate 2-External links and references:* * на сайте «Наш Фильм»...

     (1973 in Hopelessly Lost
    Hopelessly Lost
    Hopelessly Lost is a 1973 Soviet adventure comedy directed by Georgi Daneliya based on Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Cinematography by Vadim Yusov...

    )
  • Jeff East
    Jeff East
    Jeff East is an American actor. His best-known role is in the 1978 hit film Superman as the teenage Clark Kent.-Film and television credits:...

     (1973 and 1974)
  • Steve Stark
    Steve Stark
    -Career:His credits include The New Lassie, Kelsey Grammer Presents: The Sketch Show, The Game, Medium, Fairly Legal and The Event. He began his behind-the-camera career as an acting/comedy casting director on Star Search in 1983...

     (1979)
  • Ron Howard
    Ron Howard
    Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...

  • Ian Tracey
    Ian Tracey
    Ian Tracey is a Canadian Leo- and Gemini Award-winning actor. Over the years, Tracey has participated in over seventy films and television series. Tracey has starred in series like Da Vinci's Inquest and Intelligence, both CBC television series produced by long-time colleague Chris Haddock...

  • Elijah Wood
    Elijah Wood
    Elijah Jordan Wood is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II , then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's...

     (1993)
  • Brad Renfro
    Brad Renfro
    Brad Barron Renfro was an American actor. He made his film debut in 1994 at age 12 in the lead role of Joel Schumacher's The Client, going on to star in 21 feature films, several short films, and two television episodes during his career. Much of his later career was marred by a pattern of...

     (1995)
  • Mark Wills
    Mark Wills
    Daryl Mark Williams is an American country music artist, best known professionally as Mark Wills. Signed to Mercury Records between 1996 and 2003, he released five studio albums for the label — Mark Wills, Wish You Were Here, Permanently, Loving Every Minute and And the Crowd Goes Wild — as well...

    (voice)
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