Huckleberry Finn
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 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 and Tom Sawyer, Detective, two shorter sequels to the first two books. Characterization 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 describes Huck as "idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad", qualities for which he was admired by 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 "the banished Romantic". 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