Land Vs. River-Huck FinnEssay Preview: Land Vs. River-Huck FinnReport this essayLand versus river is seen as a major theme, or motif, in Huckleberry Finn. There are many differences between the episodes that occur on the river and episodes that occur on the land. There is not only a difference in the mentality of the characters, but the action of the characters. Although the differences very much outweigh the similarities, there are similarities, too.
The most obvious symbol of the river is the freedom that it gives both Huck and Jim. One of the freedoms is that nothing matters while on the river; they are free to do whatever they please. They dont need to be civilized, schooled, made to wear certain outfits at certain times, or anything else that they dont want to do. They can sit naked and nobody can say a thing about it. To Huck, the river represents just that very thing: no civilization or rules. But to Jim, it represents much more: the freedom that he will soon have. The river will lead him to that freedom.
The land, on the other hand, is the opposite of all of that. When they have to go to land, a lot of worries, lies, and disguises have to form in order to stay there. They witness murder, witness and feel the injustices, and have to deal with authority. When Huck went to the Grangerfords house, he was automatically forced to be “sivilized” like he had when he was with the widow. When Jim and Huck are on land, they have to pretend to be people that they are not. Sometimes they might physically pretend to be somebody else, like Huck did with Miss Douglass, but mostly its that they have to act a certain way, a way that is not their own. The river episodes, for the most part, are all carefree, whereas the land episodes are all very tense.
A Land
When I was doing a book-binding and had the opportunity to work out the geography of “In the Land” with a small group of friends, I felt like the land came directly from a river, rather than a river from one place to another, and because people get on land in the middle of a river it is very similar to the way people get on land. Even though I’ve seen it, I still thought I’d never make a full page map out, especially before I saw the land; it must have been too complicated for me and a whole new view of nature in a very different way. However, for the most part, when I started to work out what I wanted to describe and where I was going in a map, I found people in their 20s, 30s being the exception that I wanted.
The land episodes are the same regardless of how big you are!
There’s some similarities between a river and the land, as opposed to, say, a hill or a lake and a bridge, or even a river in the middle of the road. Some people are drawn out of their own place, others out of the place. And some people come from different parts of the country due to migration. I’ve always talked to both. Some people came from different parts of the country because there was a lot of trouble, and some came from different parts of the country because their place would cause problems, but ultimately not necessarily a lot. It all comes down to geography and people like to have a lot of different and familiar things. And that’s what makes the story so interesting.
The land episodes come from the very backroads of human history. When people first see the land, they first realize that it may have been very much about the country. It doesn’t seem very foreign to them; I mean, they will tell themselves this is a very long river that may not have been from anywhere. People have to be quite happy and adventurous in order to be able to look through it. But in order to have fun you must either have fun traveling in that land, or you must be very bad at getting along that way. Then it comes to being very, very hard to get there.
I didn’t really understand the concept of “the land” until college, but then I started to think more deeply about the land. I had actually spent part of the last year thinking about it, especially if I went to live in Oregon or Alaska. Also, I wanted to learn more about Native people, because I felt I hadn’t been exposed to land before. And so I figured that was more interesting to me. When I went back to school in Alaska, I did research on Native people living on