Mark Twain’s widely known and appreciated novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follow countless boyhood adventures between the rambunctious young boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. While Twain’s novels depict long playful summer days spent in the sun, his work is far from children’s literature. Twain’s novels include dark adult themes such as death, ignorance, physical punishment, deceit and most prominently, racism. Twain modeled both novels based on his own life experiences growing up along the Mississippi River (Frost), hoping to mirror how one's surroundings influence their character development, furthermore shaping who they will become. To do so, Twain creates a world of struggle for his protagonists, …show more content…
The factors influencing Huck’s growth strongly contrast the ones of Tom. Nature, society, and natural instinct are the most prominent influencers in the changes Huck undergoes throughout the novel. First and foremost, to fully understand the developments Huck faced, one must look at his life prior to such change. Growing up, Huck was in a terribly abusive situation, he faced extreme treatment from his father, who unlike Aunt Polly, beat Huck out of drunken anger. Huck’s father’s most chilling act was when Huck recalled that, “He chased me around and round the place; with a clasp knife, calling me the Angel of Death and saying he would kill me and that I couldn’t come for him no more” (pg 31). In an essay Liu Xi Zhang writes about the initiation theme present in Twain’s novel, or the development of a characters maturity. He notes that “escape is a necessary stage for all protagonists in the American initiation novels.” Zhang’s hypothesis proves to be true when examining Huck's life. In an effort to escape his brutal father, Huck fakes his death, runs away, and begins his journey down the Mississippi River. Not long into his journey, Huck runs into the fugitive slave, Jim, and the two embark on their journey to freedom together. Nature is the first influential factor in Huck’s development. Nature provides Huck with the Mississippi River, the symbol of freedom itself in the novel. The river carries Jim and Huck away from their problems and brings them to a world of less hardship. Because he is able to leave behind his troubling past, the river provides Huck with the opportunity to mature and look to his future. In addition, Huck learns of nature's purity because, unlike in civilization, in nature “there is no greed, deceit, hypocrisy [or] cruelty” (Sang 633). Huck finds nature to be uncontaminated by the human