People always hear those around them telling them to focus on their goals. However, the journey that leads us to our dreams is what miles begin with a step, not toward your destination, but toward the journey you embark on, venture, and change from. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tackles the changes that Huckleberry has gone through throughout the novel, exploring the impact a journey can have, the moral dilemmas it presents, and the profound significance it holds compared to reaching a specific destination.

Navigating the journey Huckleberry has gone through, the reader discovers that Finn has conflicting feelings about his father and his desire for freedom. Huckleberry has bittersweet feelings toward his father— a love-hate relationship. For example, in chapter 5, Twain’s Pap asks if Huckleberry is as rich as he has heard— and calls his son a liar. When Huckleberry replies that he has no more money, Pap then takes the dollar that Huckleberry got from the judge and leaves to buy whisky. “I haven’t got no money, I tell you; you ask Judge Thatcher; he will tell you the same.” (Twain, 62). This shows that Huckleberry wants to help his father by getting him money because he loves him; at the same time, he hates him for his bad addiction to drinking, which leads him to abuse, kidnap, and treat Huckleberry poorly. The next day, Pap shows up drunk and demands Huckleberry’s money from Judge Thatcher. Pap then kidnaps Huckleberry and takes him deep into the woods to an old cabin on the Illinois shore…

Throughout the journey, Huckleberry is becoming more independent and mature. Huckleberry wakes up on Jackson Island to hear a ferryboat firing a cannon. He knows that this will bring a drowned body to the surface and realizes that they must be searching for him. Huckleberry also remembers that another way to find a body is by putting quicksilver in loaves of bread. After the river floods and a washed-out house floats down the river past the island inside, Jim and Huckleberry find the body of a man who has been shot in the back. Jim prevents Huckleberry from looking at the “ghastly” face. Jim and Huckleberry make off with some odds and ends from the houseboat. This demonstrates that Huckleberry is still learning from his journey—with Jim to be independent and responsible, and apparently, learning lessons from the people surrounding his environment.

In conclusion, it is the journey that has the power to transform an individual, either for the better or for the worse; it is an experience that teaches one to learn from their mistakes, evolve by fixing them in a certain situation, and become independent and mature. At the end of the day, the destination matters more than the journey; it is the one thing that is written for people but not chosen. But people can change their journey but not the destination.

—Zain Alfayez