Home is a place where you grow up, play games, argue with your siblings, have family gatherings, and so much more. The saying ‘Home is where the heart is’ pretty much describes it.
In the book ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ written by Mark Twain, Huck never really felt like he had a home, which is very true. For example, at the beginning of the book, Huck is living with Miss Watson in her nice home where he has many opportunities and gets taken care of. But Huck hated having to be so proper and obey the rules. After this, Pap, his dad, tries to get custody of him, but he is unable to. Miss Watson tells him to stop roaming around her house, so Pap comes and kidnaps Huck, hiding him in a cabin. Huck at first enjoys it because he has no responsibilities, but it doesn’t feel like home. Huck finally escapes the cabin and fakes his own death, next he lived with the Grangerfords. The Grangerford house was big, pretty, and gracious. Being there, Huck was in awe of how nice their house was, but he still didn’t like he was home. Finally, when Jim and Huck are of the raft, Huck says: “…there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft you don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft” (Chapter 18). He and Jim have freedom on the raft.
Huck isn’t the only one that feels like he doesn’t have a home, Jim does too. An example of this would be when Jim tells Huck: “Well, one night I creeps to de do’ pooty late, en de do’ warn’t quite shet, en I hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn’ want to, but she could git eight hund’d dollars for me, en it ’uz sich a big stack o’ money she couldn’ resis’” (Chapter 8). Jim then ran away, because if she had sold him, he’d never get to see his family anymore because they’d be separated. Jim’s home was where his family was, and now Huck is his family, and the raft became a home for both of them.
Mark Twain in his ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ handles the topic of ‘home’ very well. He shows how Huck and Jim both struggle with finding a place that they belong. I think that having Huck and Jim both find the raft as their home and become family is something that everyone loves because Jim fills that void of not having a father in Huck’s life.