One would be hard-pressed to find a human being on this earth (outside of remote, rain-forest tribes) who did not have some familiarity with the story. Set in the antebellum south, the novel centers upon Huck, a poor, white, thirteen year-old boy and Jim, a runaway slave. The two "light out" on a raft in a quest for freedom: Huck seeks freedom from his abusive father; Jim seeks freedom from slavery. Along the way, they encounter the violence, cruelty, greed and hypocrisy of so-called civilized society. The tale of their odyssey down the Mississippi River has taken on the status of a uniquely American mythology - Mr. Twain is the American Homer. One of the central themes of Twain's book is an idea that is also of paramount importance to this national mythology - the myth of freedom. Such a phrase may sound odd, even heretical. After all, ever since Francis Scott Key penned his immortal words, it has been taken for granted that the United States is the "land of the free." In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, however, Twain asks some very uncomfortable questions about what it means to be free, and whether freedom is a goal that is even attainable. His answers to these questions do not entirely relieve the discomfort.