Before the waters of the Midwest grew angry, the rivers of the region behaved as they usually do - restrained, strong, not quick to lash out with destruction. The writer Mark Twain knew the Mississippi that way, and Huck Finn knew life on the river in the calm of the Midwestern night. But in Twain's classic story, the river was, in fact, much more than just a body of water. It was the source of knowledge and the guiding light of the entire tale. In fact, as Mindi Lazear points out, the mental "landscape" of Huckleberry Finn is actually limited by the view along either bank (37).
             In some novels the natural world is so important that some feature of it is virtually another character in the story. With respect to the river, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a novel like that. Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a small town on the Mississippi River. He patterned some of his characters' adventures after his own boyhood experiences (Poznar 316). But I also find that he did more than just that. In the novel, young Huckleberry Finn and a companion, Jim, an escaped slave, flee by raft down the Mississippi River. Often helpless to steer in the strong currents, Huck and Jim allow the big river to take them where it will and they use it as a source of knowledge along the way. "We had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning," writes Twain in the voice of Huck, the narrator.
             "We ... let the raft take care of itself .... By and by, says I, 'Hel-lo, Jim, looky yonder!' It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear ... when the flashes come."
             Winifred Madison writes that many people have said that the river is a character in the novel, a living, powerful, even godlike force t...