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There’s one thing in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that’s almost as much of a presence as Huck Finn himself. It’s the Mississippi River, of course! In just 60 seconds, Jenny offers up the full scoop on this symbol’s double meaning.

Video Transcription:

Before he became a writer, Mark Twain was a riverboat pilot on the grand Mississippi. But don’t get so caught up in the details of Twain’s setting that you fail to recognize this fact: In Huck Finn, the river isn’t just the setting for the novel. It’s this book’s central symbol.

Twists and turns. Dark, swirling waters.

Who knows what lurks beneath the surface of the Mississippi River—or around its next bend.

Well, Huck and Jim encounter their fare share of trouble on the Mississippi. There’s the floating house with the dead man inside in Chapter 9. There’s the wrecked steamboat in Chapter 10—the one with the criminals onboard.

In other words, as symbols go, the Mississippi River is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it stands for the complicated nature of Huck’s journey. The trouble Huck and Jim encounter on the river make it a symbol of turmoil—the turmoil of the South at that point in history, and the moral turmoil Huck faces as one wrong turn on the river takes them deeper into the South and Huck has to figure out what to do with Jim: Help him, or send him back to slavery?

On the other hand, the river is a symbol of freedom. It’s the one place where Huck and Jim can be authentically themselves—free from any of society’s rules. And it’s this symbolic aspect of the river that allows Huck to come to his own moral conclusions about Jim’s fate—a decision which ultimately gives them both the freedom they deserve.