He Won't Be Civilized

Greta Fleming

Mrs. Lamore

Sophomore Honors English

20 September 2016

He Won’t Be “Sivilized”

“But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before” (260): Despite the fact that Huck was uncivilized throughout all of his adventures and problems, he still doesn’t want to be civilized at the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck didn’t want to be civilized because he had a rough upbringing and he doesn’t like rules. A civilized lifestyle is not for Huck because he’s always been by himself.

Huck Finn does not want and goes against civilization throughout the book. One reason Huck resists civilization is because he had a rough upbringing. Huck’s father didn’t play a role in his life and he had nobody to guide him along the way. His father was more interested in alcohol than he was with his child. Alcohol was the most important thing in Pap’s life, “Every little while he would lock me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whiskey, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time and licked me” (21). Huck was used to it and it was such a huge part in his life that it really didn’t phase him. Alcohol became more important to Pap than feeding and taking care of Huck. Huck did not have a male figure in his life. Pap didn’t care about him so Huck was always on his own. Pap had no shame in his actions, “He said he would cowhide me till I was black and blue if i didn’t raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher and Pap took it and got drunk and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on” (19). Pap even threatened Huck with abuse if he didn’t find him the money to support his habit. Pap was no father to Huck and obviously did not set a good example for him either. Huck needed to be put in a new home, “The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn’t know the old man; so he said courts mustn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he’d druther not take a child away from it’s father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business” (19). The court did not separate Huck from his father because blood is thicker than water, basically. Huck would have been better off with ANYONE other than his father. Without his father Huck would’ve had a good adult figure in his life and he would’ve been well taken care of. His rough upbringing influenced his uncivilized attitude.

Another reason Huck refused civilization was because he did not like rules or having to follow them. Not wanting to follow rules ties back to having a