AP Free Response 2

Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of Huck Finn, a formerly homeless boy who came upon a great fortune with his friend Tom Sawyer and was placed under the guardianship of a woman in the town. Huck Finn experiences a few power struggles in the novel that highlight the meanings for the story as intended by Mark Twain. Huck's struggles to free himself from the woman, his father, and the Mississippi River throughout the story give light to Mark Twain's two primary messages - The enjoyment of youth and the thrill of the Mississippi River.
Huck had been a homeless child, and was quite obviously uncivilized. He was uneducated as well. When he was given a guardian in town, she tried to civilize Huck by making him wear proper clothes and learn to speak properly. Huck rejected both of these attempts, often taking off his shoes as soon as he was out of sight. He even snuck out to join a gang of "robbers" with Tom Sawyer. Huck's actions to remove the authority placed over him continuously show his desire to be just a kid. Eventually, he is forced into bondage by his father.
Huck's father virtually kidnaps him and places him in a cabin in the woods. Huck is often left alone by his father and tries to escape because his father is abusive and an alcoholic. Huck finally vanquishes his fathers power over him by escaping and staging a break in and faking his own death. Huck successfully escaped from the power exercised over him by elders twice and is finally able to fulfill his quest for childish fun. Twain expresses his own love of childhood when he has Huck take whatever means necessary to be a child. This message is very prominent in the beginning of this novel.
After the beginning, most of Huck's time is spent on the Mississippi. Mark Twain had worked on a steamboat and loved the river, and liked to included it in his works. Huck often encounters trouble on the river, including fog, rapids, and most notably steamboats, which ran over Huck's raft. Huck is engaged in a power struggle with the river for his own survival. Twain writes about the river to show the power, mastery, and enjoyment of it, a meaning to the novel that was quite obviously one of the most important to Twain when he was writing. He expresses the love of the river in this work and even wrote an entire book about the river later on.
Mark Twain states in both Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn that the characters an events are based on people that he knew and events that he witnessed as a child. He used these stories to show his enjoyment of childhood, primarily in Tom Sawyer, and his passion for the river, primarily in Huck Finn. In the latter, he uses Huck's struggles to gain power over his own life and the river to express his true messages when writing the story, which are the joy childhood and the excitement of the Mighty Mississippi.