Life Experiences versus Book Learning

When we begin in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck, a boy who may as well be an orphan, is living with a widow who has taken him in. The widow is attempting to instill some "book learning" in the unorthodox and ruly boy. Huck is basically uneducated in both forms, but he has been exposed to basic book learning for the better part of his life. However, when he escapes down the Mississippi with a slave named Jim, he is forced to learn with real life experience that he could look back on later. Book learning, however, was highly admired by the community in the time period and place in which they lived.

Once Huck escapes, he begins picking up real-life experience that saves his life. He and Jim find themselves in several places with different people, including the so-called exiled duke and Dauphin, and they both learn things they never could have learned by simply reading a book. Jim teaches him the life lessons he could never have learned by staying with the widow.

However, book learning does have its place in Huckleberry Finn. Book learning teaches Huck to read, a valuable skill which he uses later in the book as well. Twain obviously prefers life learning while portraying Huck and Jim's adventures, but he doesn't seem to completely oppose book learning. Through these experiences Huck has with Jim on his journey to freedom, Mark Twain shows that he prefers gaining lift experience to reading out of books.