Huckleberry Finn's Early Influences
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain is a novel about a young’s boy coming of age in Missouri. Huckleberry Finn, the main character, resides in the small town of St. Petersburg. In this town, and even after he runs away, Huck has a number of people who try to influence him. Huck, a lonely boy looks for adventure and freedom. When he cannot find adventure and freedom living with Widow Douglas and Miss Watson he seeks out for adventure and freedom with Tom Sawyer, however, he realizes that Tom’s adventures are just imaginary. So later, because of his father’s abuse escapes to an island where he confides in Jim who seems to have the best influence on Huck. Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, Tom Sawyer, and Jim all have a great influence on him and make him the person he is at the end of the novel. Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson seem to be incapable of raising a young disobedient boy like Huck. Nonetheless, they still try to mold Huck into a better boy. Specifically, when Huck asked the widow if he could smoke, “Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try not to do it any more.” (2) Huck not one to listen to many people, found that in smoking there was some good in it and the widow’s opinion did not matter. Miss Watson was the lady who introduced Huck to praying. As Huck points out, “She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks.” (10-11) Even though Miss Watson tried to influence Huck in a constructive manner, all she seemed to have had was a negative effect on Huck by making him believe her ways did not work.