Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn
Brent Springer

In Huckleberry Finn there is a huge clash between cultures for the main character Huckleberry Finn. From the very moment when he meets Jim you could tell that he was going to have a culture difference.

Huck is a kid who lives in southern Missouri he doesn’t like school and has a drunk, abusive father. Huck has been placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who because of his fathers threats to get Tom’s money. Although Huck is successful in preventing his Pap from acquiring his fortune, Pap forcibly gains custody of Huck and the two move to the backwoods where Huck is kept locked inside his father's cabin. Equally dissatisfied with life with his father, Huck escapes from the cabin, elaborately fakes his own death, and sets off down the Mississippi River.
While living in the wilderness along the Mississippi, Huck encounters a slave named Jim on an island called Jackson's Island, Huck learns that he is a runaway slave, his first instinct was to turn him in the fist moment he got. They started talking and after a while Huck decides not to turn Jim in. After talking with Huck he wondered why white people saw African Americans as lower forms of life.
Along their travels they pick up two shady drifters. One day when Huck is away in the when the two drifters turn in Jim in as a runaway slave and claim their $40 reward. Huck felt betrayed and had to choose either to save Jim or let him rot away while Huck ran to freedom. Unfortunately for Huck his conscious had gotten the better of him so he decided to go save Jim. This right here is another conflict because no white southerner would ever risk his or her life to save a slave.
Huck soon finds out that the family that bought Jim is his best friend tom’s aunt and uncle. As he approaches the house he is mistaken for Tom who is apparently supposed to arrive there some time soon. So Huck plays along and pretends to be Tom while he develops a plan to free Jim but while he is planning this great escape Tom arrives. Luckily Tom is happy to help Huck but later in a bizarre turn of events Tom is shot in the leg and Jim refuses to escape unless Tom is attended so he bosses Huck and tells him to go find a doctor. Huck finds this so weird because he has never been ordered to do anything by an African American.
After getting to the doctors office to have Tom fixed up they are caught by the doctor and taken back to Tom’s uncle’s house where their plan is revealed and so are their true identities. It is there that Tom tells everyone that Jim’s owner died and stated in her will that Jim would be set free.
This is a major cultural collision because he is not used living with a slave because since he was an African American he was looked down upon. Also He ended up saving a slave from captivity which if you would have asked anyone from that time period if they would have done the same every single answer would be the same and stay the same which is no.