Home Is Where the Heart Is

Cozell McQueen III

Home Is Where The Heart Is

"Home is where the heart is", goes the famous overly used clichй. In the situation of Huck Finn, the main character of the novel "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain, this is undeniably true. Throughout the novel Huck spends time searching for a family and a home, and even spends time as part of a few families and their homes; however, his heart always leads him back to the river and Jim. In Huck's head tells him that he needs a family like the Grangerfords, but his heart tells him that the only home he needs is the river and the only family he needs is Jim.

Huck's lack of a true family causes him to dream up an idea of how a real family should be. So when Huck meets the Grangerfords, and becomes a temporary part of their family he believes that this is what he has always been waiting for, as you can see when in chapter seventeen Huck says, "I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us." Huck believes that he needs a family like the Grangerfords and fails to realize that he does have a family. It may not be the "clichй" type of family, with a whole bunch of blood relatives living under one roof; but it is a family. Huck's family is Jim. Repeatedly throughout the novel you see Huck and Jim making sacrifices for one another, like family does for each other. Such as when Huck goes to save Jim after the Duke sells him back into slavery and when Jim risks being caught and killed to go and find Huck at the Grangerfords house. This risk taking for each other proves that Huck and Jim's relationship has grown past a friendship . They are a family.

Huck fails to realize throughout the entire novel that his home is the river. He was never as happy anywhere else. He spends time in the novel living with Miss Watson, Pap, and the Grangerfords . But he never stayed at any of those homes because none of them felt quite like a home. When Huck was on the river however, he felt at home. He had no rules to follow, nobody was making him pray, nobody was beating him for no apparent reason, and nobody was getting killed around him over some stupid family feud. It was just Huck and Jim. "QUOTE" It was the only place that Huck and Jim could actually spend time together