= Huckleberry

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= Huckleberry_Finn =
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Introduction
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Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain
who first appeared in the book 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' (1876)
and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, 'Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn' (1884). He is 12 to 13 years old during the former
and a year older ("thirteen to fourteen or along there") at the time
of the latter. Huck also narrates 'Tom Sawyer Abroad' and 'Tom Sawyer,
Detective', two shorter sequels to the first two books.

Characterization
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Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is the son of the town's vagrant drunkard,
"Pap" Finn. Sleeping on doorsteps when the weather is fair, in empty
hogsheads during storms, and living off of what he gets from others,
Huck lives the life of a destitute vagabond. The author metaphorically
names him "the juvenile pariah of the village" and cites Huck's "idle,
and lawless, and vulgar, and bad" qualities as cause for admiration
from all the other 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. An 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 straw hat, his trousers are supported with only one
suspender, and "was the first boy who went barefoot in the spring and
the last to resume leather in the fall" (Mark Twain believed that it
was "tough" or "manly" for young boys to go around barefoot at that
time). Even Tom Sawyer, the St. Petersburg hamlet boys' leader, sees
him as a "banished Romantic" figure.

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 stopped only when she died.

Huck has a carefree life free from societal norms or rules, stealing
watermelons and chickens and "borrowing" (stealing) boats and cigars.
Due to his unconventional childhood, Huck has received almost no
education. At the end of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer', Tom and Huck
recover a treasure worth thousands of dollars, which is invested on
their behalf; Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglas, who enrolls him in
school in return for his saving her life. In the course of 'Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn', the sequel to 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer', he
learns enough to be literate and reads books for entertainment. His
knowledge of history as related to Jim is inaccurate but it is not
specified if he is being wrong on purpose or as a joke on Jim.

In 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', the Widow attempts to "sivilize"
['sic'] the newly wealthy Huck. Huck's father takes him from her, but
Huck manages to fake his own death and escape to Jackson's Island,
where he coincidentally meets up with Jim, a slave 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 Cairo,
Illinois, where he can find work to eventually buy his family's
freedom. Huck and Jim take a raft down the Mississippi River, planning
to head north on the Ohio River, in hopes of finding freedom from
slavery for Jim and freedom from Pap for Huck. Their adventures
together, along with Huck's solo adventures, comprise the core of the
book.

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.

In 'Tom Sawyer Abroad' and 'Tom Sawyer, Detective', the 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
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Huck is Tom Sawyer'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 and enjoyed it,
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. In 'Huckleberry Finn', it's revealed that Huck also
considers Tom to be his best friend. At various times in the novel,
Huck mentions that Tom would put more "style" in Jim and his
adventure.

Jim, a runaway slave whom 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'. This is seen when Huck
considers sending a letter to Ms. Watson telling her where Jim is but
ultimately chooses to rip it up despite the idea in the south that one
who tries helping a slave escape will be sent to eternal punishment.

Pap Finn is Huck's abusive, drunken father who shows up at the
beginning of 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and forcibly takes his
son to live with him. 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, and live in better conditions than he did.
Despite this, early in the novel Huck uses his father's method of
"borrowing" though he later feels sorry and stops.

Inspiration
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The character of Huck Finn is based on Tom Blankenship, the real-life
son of a sawmill laborer and sometime drunkard named Wood-son
Blankenship, who lived in a "ramshackle" house near the Mississippi
River behind the house where the author grew up in Hannibal, Missouri.

Twain mentions his childhood friend Tom Blankenship as the inspiration
for creating Huckleberry Finn 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'.

Appearances
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# 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' (1876)
# 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' (1884)
# 'Tom Sawyer Abroad' (1894)
# 'Tom Sawyer, Detective' (1896)

# 'Schoolhouse Hill' (1898) - unfinished
# '"Huck Finn"' (1898) - unfinished
# 'Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians' - unfinished
# 'Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy' - unfinished
# '"Tom Sawyer's Gang Plans a Naval Battle"' - unfinished

Since Mark Twain's death, Huck Finn has also appeared in a number of
novels, plays, comic strips, and stories written by various authors
that purport to tell the latter adventures of Huck and his friends.
The Mark Twain Museum, 'CNN' and 'The Times' of London have dubbed
American canoeist and author Neal Moore "the modern-day Huckleberry
Finn.”

Portrayals
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Actors who have portrayed Huckleberry Finn in films and TV include:
* Robert Gordon (1917)
* Lewis Sargent (1920)
* Junior Durkin (1930 and 1931)
* Jackie Moran (1938)
* Donald O'Connor (1938)
* Mickey Rooney (1939)
* Gene Holland (1944)
* Eddie Hodges (1960)
* Michael Shea (1968-1969, in the TV series 'The New Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn')
* Marc di Napoli (1968 in the French/German TV series 'Les Aventures
de Tom Sawyer'/'Tom Sawyers und Huckleberry Finns Abenteuer')
* Roman Madyanov (1973, in 'Hopelessly Lost')
* Jeff East (1973 and 1974)
* Ron Howard (1975)
* Steve Stark (1979)
* Ian Tracey (1979-1980, in the TV series 'Huckleberry Finn and His
Friends')
* Gary Krug (1985, in 'The Adventures of Mark Twain')
* Vladislav Galkin (titled as Vladik Sukhachev) in 3-part TV series
"Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn" (1981)
* Mitchell Anderson (1990, in 'Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn')
* Elijah Wood (1993)
* Brad Renfro (1995)
* Mark Wills (2000, voice)
* Leon Seidel (2011, in a German version of 'The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer'; 2012, in a German version of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn')
* Jake T. Austin (2013)
* Kyle Gallner (2015)

See also
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* Mark Twain
* Tom Sawyer

Further reading
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* - Master's degree thesis

License
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry_Finn