Huck Finn review to pg.48

The first seven chapters have been all over the place. Huck sounds like he has been stuck in limbo, not knowing who to listen to, whether it be his rowdy friends, the women attempting to sculpt him into a refined man, or his staggeringly drunk father. It is not until chapter seven that he really strikes out on his own to escape pap. I like how Twain doesn't even capitalize pap's name when Huck speaks about him, symbolizing that he doesn't even deserve that much of a title. I also think it is very interesting that when Huck was playing with Tom Sawyer and the Band of Robbers he did not have the normal mentality of a child playing pretend. It seemed like he was already grown up, having been through so much turmoil in his life so far between the widow and Pap that he has already forgotten how to play.
On other occasions too, he seemed to be a young boy forced into a full-grown man's shoes. Mark Twain summed up Huck's relationship with his father in the few pages that pap spends ridiculing him for having starched clothes, knowing how to read and following the widow's instructions. Pap's view on life is drastically different than what Huck has been re-programmed to think. Reading is good, drinking is bad, religion can save you, obeying society/ the government can earn you respect (and occasionally money); the widow tries to refine Huck in a similar way that the judge does with pap. Thus far, both have been unsuccessful. Already we can tell that Huck does not want to conform, saying that if pap told him to do something, he would deliberately do it to snub authority. Huck is already an outsider; I admire his bravery, but I think most of it is founded in folly.