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In the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, the family Because there are many parallels between the characters and events within Huck Finn and the events and individuals surrounding Twain’s life, an examination of the biographical and historical context surrounding the novel’s composition reveals that Twain was influenced both socially and personally by the declining moral and social conditions of the family in the late 1800s. The events of the period induced him to indirectly voice his concerns, cautions, and beliefs through the perceived innocence of a young boy and his adventures.
The character of Jim, Huck’s Negro friend, is indebted to a former slave of Twain’s uncle John Quarles, Uncle Dan’l, whom Twain knew in his boyhood and to whom Twain owed his strong appreciation of the black race. Regarding Emmeline Grangerford’s character, Blair writes that “Twain had [long] been fascinated and delighted with the comic possibilities of lugubrious poems about death” and after reading the obituary poems produced by many American humorists Twain “was destined to work this vein”. Blair suggests that the individual who most influenced the creation of Emmeline’s person was an obituary poet and singer named Julia A. Moore. Similar to Emmeline Grangerford, Moore composed “sentimental” songs and poems “inspired by her memories, her reading in books and newspapers… [and] by the deaths of neighbors”.
Emmeline’s father, Colonel Grangerford, originated from more than one individual, including a character from one of Bret Harte’s books, Colonel Culpepper Starbottle, and Twain’s own father, John Clemens, who, like the colonel, “often wore a blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons,” was “very tall … with a long, thin smooth-shaven face,” had a look that “could stare his family into obedience,” and “had elaborate manners”. Blair also records Twain reminiscing about certain personal experiences that generated the writing of the feud between the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons in Huck Finn. In his early adventures on the Mississippi River, Twain encountered a feud between the Darnell and Watson families who, like the feuding families in Huck Finn, each lived on either side of the Mississippi River. During the feud, several instances took place, all parallel to the Shepherdson/Grangerford episode, in which a man shot a twelve-year-old boy from the rival family, the men of the families attended church armed with shotguns, and one family ambushed the wagon of the other family while both were returning home from church. In the case of the two con men, the Duke and the King, who join Huck and Jim in their river journey, they bear resemblances to two men of Twain’s acquaintances: respectively, Jesse Leathers, a distant cousin of Twain’s, and Charles C. Duncan, the captain of the ship on which Twain sailed on his expedition to the Holy Land in 1867.
The typical family structures of the Gilded Age, along with the gradual shifts in family values during that period, allow for a more in-depth understanding of Mark Twain’s view of the family. Rodney Carlisle points out that “by this time in history the family had lost … its role as an economically productive unit or a means of maintaining order and control in society” and, consequently, public and private institutions assumed these tasks. William Bridges attests that the “stereotyped” nineteenth-century American family with “the image of a closely-knit, stable, patriarchal, self-sustaining, well-disciplined family group” is a great misconception and that in fact, many writers of that era were characterizing children as “having their own way,” with “self-assertion, and conceit… insubordination … and a general want of respect for age”. Even as early as 1817 it was written that children “are absolute masters of their fates. The authority of the parents is no restraint at all”. Although according to Steven Mintz, “the family was expected to serve the political order by diffusing self-serving needs and by instilling the values of willing obedience, service, and rational impartiality”, there had been a major failure in this area, which “seemed to explain an alarming increase in violence, robbery, and drunkenness”. The gradual disintegration of the relationships of family members as their traditional or expected roles and responsibilities became blurred. When the men of working-class families discovered that it was often easier and more lucrative to desert their families and wander as a drunk or a beggar, they contributed to a growing number of fatherless families in which the “women and children [were forced] either to assume the man’s role of breadwinning or to turn to the charities for the economic support they should have found at home”.
Mark Twain was greatly influenced by the culture around him, and these previously mentioned aspects of Gilded Age society and family structure are perceptible in the various families depicted in Huck Finn. The mounting unruliness and independence of children in that era are clearly replicated in Huck as he narrates his adventures, and from the very beginning his strong-willed, self-reliant nature emerges vividly. While living with the Widow Douglas, a punctilious elderly woman, and her sister Miss Watson, a pious, finicky, “tolerable slim old maid”, Huck displays his determination and independence in striking contrast to the regulated, proper ways of the women. They are constantly in conflict with Huck’s more wild habits and uncivilized manners, and their chief goal as far as Huck is concerned is to “sivilize” his wild ways, convert his soul, and educate his unlearned mind. But Huck vehemently opposed to his guardians’ brand of civilization, views that life as “rough living” and the women as “dismal regular and decent”, and longs to be free of restraint and regulation.
A major contributor to Huck’s manner of living is his father, to whom Huck refers as Pap. Pap’s vagrant, drunken lifestyle is an illustration of the common situation in the Gilded Age; a tramp-like father and a destitute family. Because of Pap’s abusive treatment, Huck dreads Pap’s return from his wanderings, which always signals a renewal of abuse toward Huck. Although Huck encounters many family groups throughout his adventures, he constantly yearns for freedom and ultimately follows in the footsteps of his father, assuming a wanderer’s life detached from the obligations and responsibilities of a family.
The symbolism in the novel “The adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is very prominent throughout the novel in many aspects. Through family life and the deterioration of it, and the characters’ connections to important people in Twain’s life. The novel voices his concern to the rapid decline of the imagined “perfect” family lifestyle through this extravagantly wonderful novel.
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