societhf Seclusion from Society :: Adventures Huckleberry Huck Finn Essays

Huckleberry Finn – Seclusion from Society Imagine the amount of freedom one feels as they drift down a river voluntarily stranded on a raft. The thought of it is relaxing to the mind, but actually experiencing it for yourself is a whole new happening. The freedom, no worries, no sounds but the noise of the river water rushing and the sounds of boat horns off in the distance. In Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the author effectively symbolizes the river as a place outside of society. In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Twain uses the river as an escape from society for the characters Huck and Jim. Twain is showing examples of his own life through the character Huck. The reason for saying this is that Twain had grown up amongst many rivers in his life time, including "a New York town named Riverdale which is now a part of the Bronx, New York City's northernmost borough, Riverdale was a separate residential community when Mark Twain rented a house there in 1901."(Rasmussen, 391) Twain loved the water so much that he piloted many steamboats on the Mississippi River. The last steamboat on which Twain worked as a pilot was the "Alonzo Child." "The Alonzo Child was a 493-ton side-wheeler, the Child was built in Jeffersonville, Indiana for the Missouri river trade around 1856" (Rasmussen, 8). This is an example of how Twain lived by many rivers and how Twain used the river to get away from society. In Twain's novel the character Boggs shows an excellent example of someone who is lost and uses seclusion as an escape from society. "In chapter twenty-one, Huck is idling in the scruffy village of Bricksville, when Boggs charges in on a horse during his monthly drunk. A red faced man in his in his fifties. Boggs rides about wildly hurling insults and threats proclaiming that he has come to kill Colonel Sherburn."(Rasmussen, 39) This shows that people don't give him as much respect as he would like because when he gets drunk he acts very irresponsible and he is a bad role model. There for Boggs secludes himself to his home to hide his embarrassment.