In life, people change in many different ways by either forcing themselves to change or by experiencing events. Everybody in life changes, sometimes it takes a long time but sometimes it's an immediate reaction but eventually they will change. Often people change due to experience or force it usually to better themselves. According to psychology, change can usually be good or bad depending on how it affects the person and society around the individual.
Change, to become or make oneself or one thing different, is something that can change the course or outcome of the situation. When something changes, it's perceived in a different way by society, when something like a human changes, they either change physically or mentally. Huck and Jim change themselves mainly mentally and one of the reasons why they changed the way they did would be because of running away.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim, two companions, form an alliance and run away from their conflicts, family, friends and issues to gain some freedom. Huck and Jim undergo a series of changes in the course of the book because of their decisions or actions made but in this case, their change is portrayed in a positive way.
How does Mark Twain in his book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, show change in his two main characters, Huck and Jim? In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim's decision to run away together, the adventures they have and what they learn from each other cause them to change simultaneously, those changes would be their personalities, they way they think/thought and their interpretations on morals/values. All these things that cause them to change like the adventures they have, what they learn from each other and running away change them but question here is how? How do these things that happen in the book cause them to change and why?
The adolescence stage, something everyone should be familiar with. The adolescence stage is when individuals become more abstract and think deeper into things like relationships, love and morality (Strictland 12). During the adolescence stage, the individual will usually change its behavior/attitude. Huck being in the adolescence stage could be a big impact on why he changed because as the book progresses, Huck does think deeper and become more abstract. Huck's change might be partially explained by him being in the adolescence stage, an important stage in his life, but Jim is also in his own stage of life which Huck still has a lot time to get to, middle age.
Middle age, another stage of life in which the adult population is involved, is what Jim is in right now. Middle age has passed the adolescence stage and all other stages of life before it and now adults have a sense of what's right and what isn't. The middle age groups are known to carry the burden of responsibility in the course of social change and family life (Huyck), ironic in Jim's case because he doesn't seem to carry much responsibility other than Huck because he left his family. Middle aged people are also known to be the best leaders in society and are known as the "command generation" because of their sense of control, competence and optimism (Huyck).
Jim wouldn't be the best example of the "command generation" because sometimes Huck has more power over him than he does. But this statement about the "command generation" is true because it explains why teenagers usually never win an argument with their parents. Huck and Jim have had the same experience where Jim refuses to listen to Huck about his point of view on Solomon and why he was the wisest man that ever lived. Middle Age also might be something that caused Jim to change but not as much as Huck because unlike Huck, Jim has been through all the stages of life before middle age and already knows a lot but something that could explain much more on the topic of Jim's change would be the decision he made to run away.
The main reason for Huck and Jim's change was running away. Running away with each other caused them to change their personality, their thoughts and interpretations on morals/ personal values. The outcome of the story would have been tremendously different if Huck and Jim hadn't have made the decision to run away together. This decision allowed them to have the adventures that they had like the rattlesnake incident (Twain 53), and also made the journey easier for them because they both had somebody to look after.
In addition to running away, what they learned from each other also caused them to change. Things that definitely changed were Huck and Jim's personalities or parts of it. In the beginning of the book, Huck acted like a street boy who didn't want to be civilized by society and was smart. Huck's intelligence is shown through his fake death (Twain 33) where instead of just running away, he trashes up the cabin, spills pig's blood on the floor and fakes his death. Throughout the story, Huck acts a lot less like a street boy than he did in the beginning of the story because of his experience with his friends and events (Corsini 24). An example of Huck becoming better at lying and being sneaky would be when he dressed up as a girl (Twain 55); He his knowledge was got caught but still managed to keep his identity secret. Jim also becomes wiser, in the beginning limited but as he traveled with Huck and had more adventures, he learned more about society and became more intelligent (Twain 296)
Social interactions and life experiences can change the attitude or behavior of a person (Moghaddam 323), this is true in the case of Huck and Jim. The way Huck and Jim think/thought was also one of the factors that changed. Jim was pretty much broad minded but he later changed that and thought more wisely and deeper into things. Jim went from a person with limited intelligence and a person who quickly drew to conclusions to a person who thought more wisely, understood more and wasn't so hasty in drawing conclusions like he did in the incident where he was talking to Huck about King Solomon.
In the situation where Huck was telling Jim the story of Solomon, Jim refused to accept that Solomon was making the right decision but quickly went to conclusions , for example: "Does you know 'bout dat chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?" (Twain 77), here he refused to accept the fact that Solomon was faking it the whole time to find out which woman was the real mother but Jim refuses to listen to that part and stays with his decision. Later on in the book, Jim becomes smarter, isn't so gullible and becomes less stubborn. (Twain 296). Huck also changes his thinking ways after running away. He becomes a little sneakier, thinks deeper
about things and becomes better at lying. Huck when lying does it for a good situation, usually. He becomes better at lying by thinking more about the situation, its outcome and knows how not to extend it (Twain 94). But this is not unusual because Huck is in his adolescence stage and during adolescence, individuals become more abstract and think deeper into things in everyday life (Strictland 12). Jim also undergoes a change in his process of thinking. He starts to use superstitions a lot less and just goes along with life. In the beginning of the book he was superstitious about everything and believed that "…niggers can't have no luck…" (Twain 93) and "I alwuz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work" but all that changed once he continued the process of running away with Huck. As the story continues, Jim doesn't mention much of his superstitions on their journey or anything about luck because he learns to accept life and the fact that everything happens for a reason.
Another thing that changed was Huck's interpretations on moral values. Jim's interpretations didn't really change because he respected his culture and followed his and some of society's morals. Jim teaches Huck a lot about moral values according to his culture. Jim teaches Huck the meaning of love and exactly what friendship is.
It all started in the rattlesnake incident, Huck there denied ever doing it, "I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it" (Twain 53), and realized that Jim did actually care for him and trusted him. During this incident, Huck started understanding more about friendship and after that his relationship with Jim went from a friend-to-friend to a father-to-son relationship (Twain 53). Jim's moral values give Huck a relationship with Jim that he couldn't have with his own father. Also because of Jim, Huck feels like turning in Jim (Twain 75) because he realized that Miss Watson did love him, another thing that Jim taught Huck about, and he feels bad that he's betrayed her by not turning in Jim but in the end he decides not to turn Jim in. This shows that Huck does care for Jim because Huck feels that Jim cares for him and this is also something that Huck has developed over the course of the book because Jim and him have shared so many experiences, learned more about society, how good or cruel humans really are and what life means, all this had a huge impact on not only Huck but also Jim by changing both of their personalities, the way they think/thought and Huck's interpretations on moral or personal values.
Huck and Jim made the decision to run away together which caused them to have the adventures they had and allowed them to learn from each other. Running away, the adventures they had and what they learn from each other change both Huck and Jim and to be more specific, it changes their personalities, the way the think/thought, and their interpretations on moral values. Huck and Jim developed a father-to-son relationship, they both became wiser, Huck respected moral values and understood the concept of love, Jim understood more about society and became less superstitious.
When somebody reads this story, they can probably relate it to their own life because maybe they ran away like Huck and Jim did or maybe they themselves changed. What happened to Huck and Jim, happens regularly in society today where teenagers run away from their family because they have problems or issues and all learn some kind of a valuable lesson from running away just like Huck and Jim. All the things that Huck and Jim experienced and changed were caused by one thing, the decision that Huck and Jim made to run away not alone, but together.
