The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn fits right in with Fay Weldon's descriptions of happy endings. Twain's novel shows the progression of Huck as a person, with a "moral reconciliation" ending, an ending that is also very significant to the novel as a whole.
In the beginning of the story, Huck is a true blue southerner. Miss Watson's attempts to civilize Huck have failed. However, Huck seems to know the rightful place of slaves, a vital part of the southern economy. Huck is very much a child, physically and emotionally. Huck and Tom are equal in their levels of immaturity, but as the adventures progress this will change. Through experiences such as the letter to Miss Watson, Tom's childish attempts at getting Jim out of the cabin, and the controversy with the king and duke, Huck begins to mature as a person both through his actions and through his morals. Through his "adventures" with Tom, Huck begins to develop a sense of what is mature and what is not. Tom is still "in the dark" with regards to maturity. Through the scandals of the king and the duke, Huck begins to understand what is right and what is wrong. When he wrote to Miss Watson concerning the location of Jim, he recognized what was morally right and what was morally wrong. Twain exposes the moral, ethical, and human development of Huck through his childhood adventures.
This moral development that Huck experiences is very important to the novel because it shows what life in the South was truly like. Twain's use of language gives the story a lot of authenticity. Huck's moral development can be made parallel with the development of the United States. However, it only took Huck a couple years while it took the United States hundreds of years to figure out what was morally right and wrong. Twain causes the reader to look deep inside him or herself to find their inner insecurities and to get them fixed, just as Huck did in his own journey.
