Although I believe that Huck Finn is capable of moral growth, I believe he is severely limited by the “system,” that society he has been raised in. Huck has been born and bred in a society in which the concepts of “right and wrong” are seriously misconstrued. According to the upstanding citizens in Huck’s world, slavery is not wrong, and the opposite is evil. The moral pillars to which he is expected to look up, The Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, preach of Providence and to follow the Bible and be a “good person,” when they own slaves and think nothing of it.

In this way, Huck believes he is “brung up” to wickedness because he was not born to the right family and was raised by an outlaw. He therefore thinks that the desire to help Jim is evil, and makes him a worse person for it, when in fact, it is the exact opposite which is true: his desire to help Jim makes him a good person, but he has no way of knowing this, because of the hypocrisy of the “good” people in his life.

Huck shows that he is capable of doing the right thing by four important actions he takes throughout the course of the novel, each increasing in moral depth. The first is when he makes the decision to help Jim run away. This is against the law, and, as far as Huck has been taught, against the Bible, and will surely condemn him to hell.

“...People would call me a low down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum - but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell, and I ain’t agoing back there anyways.” (Chapter VIII).

He never flat out decides to help him, but once he swears his word, he considers Jim and himself part of a team. When Mrs. Loftus, the woman he tries to fool as a girl, tells him that her husband and others are after Jim, he runs back to Jim and cries, “Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!” (Chapter VIII)

This use of the word us, when there is no way they are after Huck because they believe him dead, is proof of the first sign of moral growth -- he is putting Jim in front of himself and about to put himself in danger to help him.

The second action he takes that proves to be the “right thing” comes a few chapters later. During the fog, after playing a joke on Jim, Huck feels so terrible about it that he apologizes, humbling himself to a black man.

“It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger -- but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t a done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.” (Chapter XV)

In the culture Huck has been brought up in, this is seen as utterly wrong, because a black man was not even considered human, but was property. Huck’s growing understanding that Jim is a human being, with feelings that can be hurt, and not merely property is another sign that he is capable of growth.

The third incident occurs right after Huck humbles himself to Jim. Huck overhears Jim’s desire to steal his family back, and decides to turn him in to some bounty hunters he sees further up the river.

“Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them.
It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about to be free. It was according to the old saying, ‘give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.’ Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger which I had as good as helped run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children - children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm. I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him.” (Chapter XVI)

He has made up his mind to turn Jim in, and is on his way to the bounty hunters, when he hears Jim talking to himself (but really to Huck):

“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole’ Jim.” (Chapter XVI)

Huck tries to go on and continue his plan, but he can’t confess, and lies to the men that the man on the raft is white. He then continues to convince them that the man has smallpox and needs their help, which he knows will send them away. This deed proves his loyalty to Jim and yet another step on his way toward moral growth.

The last action Huck takes which proves he is capable of moral growth happens about two-thirds of the way through the novel. After everything he has gone through, Huck is terrified that Providence will punish him for helping Jim run away.

“...when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, and I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared.” (Chapter XXXI)

He decides the only way out of his plight is to pray, but he cannot because he feels he is wicked, and so he decides to cleanse himself to pray by writing a letter to Miss Watson which will turn Jim in. This is the only way he sees he will be saved. He writes the note, but still cannot pray, and begins to think of the time he has spent on the river with Jim.

“...And got to thinking over our trip down the river, and I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now...”

This review of events shows a considerable amount of growth, for it is an action he has not performed up to this point in the novel. He remembers how well Jim treated him, and he even remembers what he has done for Jim, and how wonderful Jim’s reaction to it was. He can’t make himself mad at Jim, but actually feels softly toward him. He then makes the biggest, deepest moral decision of the novel: he tears up the note.

“...And then I happened to look around, and see that paper....It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
All right, then, I’ll go to hell’ -- and tore it up.”

This marks his complete ability to change -- he has stood up to society and decided not to go along with it.

Unfortunately, this is not the complete story, and Huck is not necessarily to be seen as the great moral hero. Every event described proves that he is capable of doing the right thing, but after he has performed every one of these actions, he justifies them and does not necessarily carry a lasting lesson. His reasoning is always wrong because he has been brought up to mistrust his own instincts, and so he never fully understands himself that he is doing the right thing.

When he first helps Jim escape, he needs to get away himself, for if anyone found out he wasn’t dead, he would be in trouble for faking it, and would also have to face his father (as far as he thinks, at this point). When he humbles himself to Jim in the fog, it is for something he caused, and this action is therefore not quite as selfless as it seems. After lying to the bounty hunters, he is convinced he has done the wrong thing, and thus decides to decide upon whether or not to do right or wrong depending on whichever “comes handiest.” When he writes the note to Miss Watson, he still sees Jim as someone’s property, even after showing signs of understanding Jim’s humanity. After tearing up the note, he is convinced that he will go to hell, and decides to just do wicked for the rest of his life, because he was “brung up to it.”

“‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’ -- and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work to steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.” (Chapter XXXI)

He still believes that helping Jim is wrong, because there is no one to tell him otherwise. This is only increased by Tom Sawyer’s presence on the Phelps’ plantation. Tom Sawyer is Huck’s role model because Tom is everything Huck could not be: he was brought up in a clean house, sent to school, has knowledge of books, and knows (what society considers to be) right from wrong. Huck defers to Tom because he “knows” that Tom is a good person and is “smarter” than he. What Huck does not realize is that his own instincts and morals are actually purer than Tom’s educated ones.

I do not hold a grudge against Huck for not standing up to Tom in the last sequence of the novel, because Huck has been misled, and there is no one to show him the truth. While Tom is playing cruel tricks on Jim, Huck has no choice but to go along with him because he needs Tom’s help and silence to free Jim, because Huck does not realize what Tom knows; that Jim was freed by Miss Watson.

Huck is not wrong in going along with Tom because Jim shows no sign to Huck that he should not do so. Jim defers to Tom as much as Huck does, which only proves to Huck that Tom is right. Both Huck and Jim are trapped inside the “system.” They are only truly free when they are outside of it, on the river, in their own little utopia, and they unfortunately cannot stay outside of the system forever. Tom represents the society that is keeping them down, and the fact that neither has the courage to stand up to it may be Twain’s overall comment.

I have always seen Huck as a rebel, who goes against the grain simply because it suits him to do so, but I don’t believe Twain sees him this way. Twain sees him as the hope of society, holding fast to the ideas of the society because he doesn't trust in himself enough to challenge it. In this age of political correctness and true freedoms, it is hard to imagine that our morals could be as flipped as Huck’s are, but that was the case in the time Huck Finn was living -- his instincts are right, but he is so convinced they are wrong that he can not face himself or society to explain that he is right, because he doesn’t realize it himself. I believe he is capable of moral growth, but needs to be taught that it is the society which is at fault, and not himself.