The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

            
             The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, by Chris Fuhrman, are two excellent juxtaposing novels. Both are stories of the "coming-of-age' of two young boys, Huck and Francis. Although their moral maturity is results of two very different time periods and settings, the reader notices a parallel between these two stories. This parallel is how each boy grows to understand either himself and/ or the society that he is living in and learns how to make decisions on his own.
             In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck, the main character's morale is transformed by one of the main flaws in society: Racism. Being brought up in highly racist society Huck, naturally, had a racist mentality. Huck found the society's morals to be untrustworthy, however, because they fail to protect him from abuse. The one most important thing that society does teach Huck is not to trust it. His teachings regarding slavery and race always dictated that turning in a runaway slave was the "right- thing to do. Thus when he runs away and discovers Jim, a runaway salve, Huck's initial instinct is to turn the runaway in. However, after giving it some thought he decides not to turn him in. Jim proves to be a helping hand in Hucks escape because they are both running away from oppression of different sorts and in various ways they aid each other. His distrust in society and growing companionship with Jim leads Huck to further question societies' morals regarding slavery. Huck numerously ponders on the thought if turning Jim in, however in the end, he decides not to. Furthermore, he says that he would rather go to hell than turn Jim in, proving his sincerity of the decision. Huck comes to his own conclusion and is unaffected by what was socially accepted at the time. Huck matures throughout the progression of the book in the sense that he begins to formulate his own opinion on moral issues, such as slavery, rather than listen to the dictating society.