Rough Draft

My response to Huck is that he is a poor child living in white society as kind of an outcast. He goes through the process of being reformed, but he is reluctant to change. Since he has not grown up knowing the "normal" rules of white society in the South, he doesn't understand or accept many of the things his reformers teach him. He sees many things in society he dislikes, along with his father’s behavior, and decides to run away.  He escapes from society, which has treated him so poorly in the passed.   Huck has a perspective which is free of many of the prejudices and biases of the South, but he is only a child and can sometimes be influenced and persuaded by outside sources. Huck’s upbringing, and the fact he has been an outcast most of his life, gives him a unique way of looking at the world, but he still has to deal with white society and its rules.  Huck, on his journey, must wrestle with his own views and what he thinks white society wants him to do.  His perspective gives him a chance to question white society and think for himself.  Huck struggles with the pressures of white society, but he usually finds that society’s rules don’t make any sense and he cast them aside.  

In the beginning Huck sees Jim as just another slave.  This is something that was taught to him by society not something he truly believes in.  Everything in society says to turn in a runaway slave.  Huck listens to Jim’s story and can see why Jim escaped from enslavement.  He sees no real reason to turn Jim in except for the fact white society demands it.    Huck comes close, a couple times, to turning Jim in but something stops him.  He thinks he has been mean to Miss Watson by helping Jim, so he decides to turn him in.  Jim starts to talk about freedom and freeing his family, and Huck begins to feel bad about that too. He sees Jim is a real person with real emotions and he can’t go back on his word to Jim that he wouldn’t tell.  He was not brought up in proper society so his true feelings outweigh what he thinks everyone else would want him to do.  On numerous occasions Huck goes against what he thinks society would want him to do in order to save Jim.  In Huck’s mind he betrays Miss Watson, gives up being a respectable person, has to go to hell and lies to respectable people all to help Jim.  Once he gets to know Jim he makes up his own mind.  Huck eventually starts thinking of Jim as a friend.  Huck’s perspective allows him to have a special relationship with Jim.  A slave being a friend of a white person would have been something unheard of at that time.