Huck Finn Blog Post #2

                Huck and Jim have a father and son relationship; however their roles as father and son can be interchangeable.

                Jim is like a father to Huck right when they find each other in the woods. He took charge and made breakfast for Huck and himself, which is a fatherly action. Jim saved Huck from his miserable loneliness. Jim was also a man that Huck could look up to and a man that he could learn maturity from, a skill that he could not have learned from Pap. Jim was always looking out for Huck and the reader could tell that he cared for Huck as well. “’It’s a dead man. Yes, indeed; naked too. He’s been shot in de back…Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face-it’s too gashly’” (Twain 57). When Jim and Huck find the dead body Jim advises Huck not to look at it. Jim does this, as a father would do, to protect Huck from seeing a dead person. Jim wanted to protect Huck from seeing the dead man because he is still a child, even though does not seem like one.

                 Huck is like a father to Jim as well. Huck is also very protective of Jim and Huck tries to teach him everything he knows. “I had got so uneasy I couldn’t set still. I had to do something with my hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it” (Twain 64). This quote is Huck’s reaction to hearing that there if a reward out for catching Jim. Huck is immediately worried and has to go find Jim so they can go hide. Another way that Huck is fatherly to Jim is when Huck is reading to Jim. “I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty… ‘stead of mister” (Twain 81). Jim was surprised to hear all about these things that Huck was teaching him. Jim took the story about King Solomon very literally and Huck was helping Jim to understand the reasoning behind it.

                Huck and Jim are not the most conventional father figures to each other, but they are there for one another in more ways than one.