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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page paper examining the symbolism of the raft and the journey Huck and Jim take on it in Mark Twain's classic novel. The paper concludes that the raft journey symbolizes a metaphorical descent into the underworld, where Huck learns about himself and his relationship to Jim, and emerges changed. Bibliography lists 1 source.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: JR7_Rafthuck.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
the beginning of the journey, just like a child at the beginning of life, and have learned a great deal by the time they reach the journeys end. In
Mark Twains classic Huckleberry Finn, the boy protagonist, Huck, and an escaped slave, Jim, embark on a journey down the Mississippi River on a raft. Traveling only at night to
avoid detection, they float downstream for seven nights before the raft is finally destroyed. Their closeness on the raft, and their dependence upon one another as they drift down the
swollen river, reflects the growing closeness that these two characters feel toward one another, and foreshadows their complete interdependence at the novels end. Before embarking on the symbolism of
the raft itself, however, a few observations should be made about the river journey itself. For one thing, the direction of this journey seems puzzling, at first glance. The normal
direction for escaped slaves to travel is North, not South. Jim and Huck cannot help but realize the danger of traveling further into slave territory rather than away from it.
Their original plan, according to Hucks narrative, is to get to "Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in. . . . We would sell the
raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble" (Twain, 85). Huck can be forgiven for this
because he is only a boy, and Jim because he is an uneducated slave with little experience of the world, but this plan is daft, to say nothing of dangerous.
But what the southward trip lacks from a logical standpoint, it makes up in symbolism. Traced on a map, the southward direction of the trip would appear to go
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