Huck From a New Angle

As I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, I found myself constantly having to remember that these elaborate, and sometimes dangerous, adventures were all occurring to a 12-year-old boy! Twelve seems way too young for me. As I read and began shaping pictures of the events transpiring in my head I continued to see maybe a “boy” my age or maybe a year or two younger, but again and again I had to remind myself that no, Huck was only twelve.

            This got me thinking. Twelve years old is so young. I nanny two kids and the boy is twelve and in seventh grade. He is mid-growth spurt, just got braces, and shuffles instead of walking because his body hasn’t quite caught up with his feet. This is the age that Huck Finn is supposed to be? I find that very hard to believe. The boy I nanny has to be reminded to take a shower each night; I can’t imagine him trying to feed himself, and yet here Huck is feeding himself, living by himself, surviving by himself. He is completely independent and happy about it. I understand that 2014 is much different than the 1884, when the book was first published, but twelve is twelve.

            With this notion, my thoughts turned towards my Child and Adolescent Development class I am required to take as an education major. Is this novel an accurate depiction of a twelve year old? Since school started, we have been working on studying what affects a child’s development and hence their life. This age range is known as Early Adolescence. Their cognitive development consists of an “emerging capacity to think and reason about abstract ideas.” Huck most definitely falls into these guidelines. He has the ability to think on his feet illustrated by his quick and witty comebacks and answers to people’s questions of his journey and Jim’s freedom. Even I, as a 19 year old would not have been able to come up with responses to questions asking about his made-up pasts and about Jim’s motives for appearing to run away. Although, I think where the reader sees this most is the idea of his conscious. Huck knows that is thought of as right as wrong but he challenges it because maybe it is not really right and wrong. This is the biggest abstract concept that Huck faces and this is where I struggled with imagining such a young boy. The idea of a person’s conscious is not something every twelve-year-old thinks about. The boy that I nanny would never bring up such a topic; this is why I began thinking of Huck during my child development class to determine if Huck’s mannerisms truly are possible to be those of a twelve-year-old. 

            In my child and adolescent development class we also discussed that early adolescents’ social-emotional development consists of “continued (and perhaps greater) interest in peer relationships; self-consciousness about appearance; challenges to parents, teachers, and other authorities regarding rules and boundaries.” Because of this age range’s tendency to want to develop peer relationships, I wonder why Huck never felt this way. For kids this age, friendships are usually a priority. Huck never thinks twice about leaving any relationship. He has no trouble leaving Tom Sawyer; he never gets fazed when he thinks he has lost Jim forever; and he doesn’t think twice about leaving the Grangerford’s. At the conclusion of the novel, when Tom and Huck are reunited, Huck’s actions do seem to change ever so slightly to act more like Tom, in a more childish demeanor. Along the same lines, Huck never appears to be self-conscious of the way he looks. Like most boys this age, Huck does not really care what he wears as long as he is comfortable. As far as challenging authorities regarding boundaries- well this is a definition of Huckleberry Finn.  

            I love to think about how my different academic classes overlap. Many of them are very different genres and cover opposite topics but somehow have many things in common. Things like this remind me of the importance of collaboration between multiple fields of work.