Huck Finn Chapters 1-5

The theme “Coming-of-age” means to mature, find oneself, or to have a better understanding of life.  Most people would not expect to see this theme in a story such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, simply because the main character is a young about, and you don’t expect him to be mature or have a deeper understanding of the world around him.  But Huck Finn does, and it was very interesting to read about his coming of age during the first five chapters.

One example of the theme coming-of-age was when Huck talked about learning how to read, write, and do math.  Now in today’s culture, this wouldn’t be seen as a big deal, because most children go to school to read and write, and they are expected to learn and receive a good education.  For Huck Finn, education was a luxury.  He came from a poor family, in which no one knew how to read or write.  So even early on in the story he was doing things that some adults couldn’t even do, which showed maturity and the ability to understand aspects of life.

Another example would be when Huck formed his own opinion on religion in chapter three.  “I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no advantage about it-except for the other people-so at last I reckoned I wouldn’t worry about it anymore, but just let it go.” (Twain, 12).  This is part of coming-of-age because he was able to understand both the widow and Miss Watson’s point of views, and then decide for himself what he thought about it.  Most kids just believe whatever it is that their parents believe at this age, but no Huck.  He choose what he wanted to believe in and that was it.

On page 15, you can see how Huck’s character starts to mature by the way he reacts to one of Tom Saywer’s stories about Arabs and elephants.  In this last paragraph before chapter 4, Huck says “So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies.  I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different.  It had all the marks of a Sunday school.” (Twain, 15).  He is starting to drift away from all of Tom’s stories and theories about pirates and genies, and thinking about the situation logically.  He sees the faults in Tom’s stories and makes the decision that they are lies based on the evidence around him, which in this case was a Sunday school having a picnic on a hill.  We are barely halfway through the novel and you can see how much Huck has matured, and how he is starting to get a better understanding of things.