Mark Twain’s classic American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, presents an often overlooked topic of moral development. Huckleberry Finn experiences Kohlberg’s stages of moral development of pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. At the beginning of the novel, Huck is seen as conventional as his morals are punishment-obedience based.
As the story continues, Huck switches to conventional making his morals based on authority social order maintaining. Until the end of the novel, Huck alters more to post-conventional morality as it becomes a universal ethical principle.
Writers, Mark Altschuler, Jonathan Bennett, and Laurel Bollinger, provide their literary criticisms on Huck’s moral development.
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Where Altschuler focuses on Huck being motherless, Bennett focuses on Huck’s sympathy towards, and Bolling focuses on Kohlberg’s stages.
Although all the writers provide different arguments as to the reasons of Huck’s moral development, they all underlie each other. Through hardships, Huckleberry Finn illustrates the importance of moral development through family and friends as he fails to have a stable morality.
At the beginning of the novel, Huck’s behavior fits into the conventional and conventional stages. Huck evaluates his actions on how they will directly affect him as if he is going to be punished, receive a reward, or please Tom Sawyer. In chapter two, Huck and Tom take off during the night and Huck does whatever Tom says to please him.
To the point where Huck joins a gang of robbers because Tom wanted him to and offers Miss Watson’s life as collateral to be in the gang. Huck’s willingness to give up Miss Watson’s life shows his ignorance to others because he is admitting to the superior power of Tom to gain acceptance. This goes to play that he has no parental figure to look up to.
Altschuler states that “separation from the mother shatters self-esteem because it forces the child to confront his weakness and dependency. Motherless children, therefore, should have great difficulty developing into moral human beings” (31). By the reasoning of Huck being motherless, Altschuler attempts to make the audience understand how nature and nurture play a major role in a child’s moral development.
Huck begins to struggle more with life and decision making beginning with the kidnapping situation with Pap. He is seen shifting between all three stages of morality, Huck needs to start caring for himself since society has failed to protect him. Then once he escapes, at first when he meets with Jim, he goes back to being childish and plays mean jokes on Jim.
Until Huck realizes Jim gets hurt and eventually feeling guilty, he apologizes. Bennett criticizes Huck saying, “one’s sympathies should be kept as sharp and sensitive and aware as possible, and not only because they can sometimes affect one’s principles or one’s conduct or both” (133). Bennett also states:
“Huck clearly cannot conceive of having any morality except the one he has learned-too late, he thinks-from his society. He is not entirely a prisoner of that morality, because he does after all reject it; but for him that is a decision to relinquish morality as such; he cannot envisage revising his morality, altering its content in face of the various pressures to which it is subject, including pressures from his sympathies” (131).
Jim and Huck develop a close relationship as they adventure for freedom, which effected Huck’s moral development for the better since he matures. However, when Tom comes back into the picture Huck goes back to his old ways by regressing back to being a follower of Tom and goes along with Tom’s unnecessary plan to helping Jim.
Some hope is still spared as Huck questions Tom about his plan, displaying his development with necessary insight. Bollinger comments, “Huck’s decisions are not based on abstract moral reasoning. His loyalty to both friends means that, in the face of their conflicting needs, Huck is paralyzed” (33).
Throughout the novel, Huck alters between stages until in the end, he progresses towards stage three, where he finally makes his own decision based on his intuition and experience. Therefore, Huck reaches his moral peak towards the end of the novel. Huck’s moral development journey was bumpy as he struggles to reconcile his feelings and what he has learned.
Huck’s vulnerability to outside pressure and his skepticalness to society brings a relatable point of view. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development do not fit all the reasons for behavior, and in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s interpretation of a young boy making choices provides a realistic sense into the novel.
