Huckleberry Finn Ending
Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ends on an extremely disappointing note. The appropriateness of the ending for his novel is marked as very inappropriate because the change in tone, moving from contemplative and excessive to more ironic, comical, and mocking, changed the entire built up mood of the novel. Statements that the characters make at the end of the novel are an immediate switch from the other part of the novel. Huck’s development ceases to exist and Tom overshadows him. The San Francisco Daily Examiner states that the novel is “a pot-boiler in its baldest form” and the Boston Evening Traveller states that Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn “appears to be singularly flat, stale and unprofitable”. The adventures of Huckleberry Finn ending is disappointing because the ending creates more questions than it has answered.
At the start of Tom Sawyer’s arrival in the end of the book, Twain’s novel begins to unwire and diminish the entire novel within only two chapters and, although tying the novel together, the ending events are a result of revealing information. Tom revealed that Miss Watson died two months ago, at the peak of Huck’s adventure, and within her will, she leaves Jim as a free slave. (367). The knowledge of Jim being a free slave means that all the moral decisions Huck has made regarding Jim and himself, has been pointless and gone to waste. The journey down the Mississippi River seems meaningless, every decision Huck made about turning Jim in or helping Jim was technically useless because Jim was a free slave despite any choice Huck made. During the journey down the river, Huck often worries about be sent back to Pap, if he is caught, but Jim reveals to Huck that he “kin git yo’ money when you wants it” because the floating body in the river he saw was Pap. (372). With the knowledge that Pap is dead and has been dead since the start of Huck’s adventure means that once again Huck’s worry about being sent back to Pap is and any...
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