The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the first great American novels. The book is noted for its innocent young protagonist (Huck Finn), its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River, and its sober and often scathing look at the entrenched attitudes, particularly racism, of the time. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.