The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
             Mark Twain first introduces the character of Huckleberry Finn to the reader as a boy. He is playful, ignorant, and like most kids worried about how he is viewed by those around him. However, there are distinctions between Huck and St. Petersburg's other young boys, mainly in the way that they have been raised. He demonstrates a kind of world-weariness, and an understanding of the character of others that can only come from experience. For example, he adjusts to life with his new guardians, Miss Watson and the Widow Douglass, and generally does like them as people, but has the ability to see through to their hypocracy and the unnecessary rigidity of their lifestyles, especially when it comes to their presentation of Christianity. He states, "This is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault in me for doing a thing that had some good in it" (Twain, 4). Based on her own experience, Miss Watson presents what she thinks is best for "poor lost lamb" Huck, while at the same time unknowingly demonstrating how little she actually understands him. He has grown up under the occasional substandard care of the town drunkard, and appears to have learned at a very early age the essentials of survival. The rules he has followed thus far are his own, and when presented with the standards of Christian morality, he immediately rebels.
             However, some practices which Huck is surrounded by are not rooted in Christian morals but simply in southern convention. Acceptance of slavery despite the fact that preachings of charity tell them to accept all people, and take care of one another is something which is not questioned in the south, it is a part of the culture, and passed on to future generations as s...