Do Huck's purpose for lying change?

Throughout the book, Huck experiences emotional change and maturity, and along with it, his bad habit of lying for pleasure changes for the better. In chapter 11, Huck becomes bored with staying on the raft all the time and wants to go into town. He thus dresses up as a girl and attempts to fool Judith Loftus. Huck said, "Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring-up some way... he [Jim] studied it over and said... dress up like a girl... that was a good notion, too" (Twain 54). In this early scene, Huck's sole purpose for lying and dressing up as a girl was for entertainment. Not much later on, Huck and Jim get stuck in the middle of a thunderstorm and become separated. After the river calmed, Huck finds Jim asleep on the raft and Huck quietly slips onto the raft; when Jim wakes up to find Huck next to him, Huck tricks him into thinking that Jim was dreaming everything. "[Jim] Didn't you tote out de line in de canoe fer to make fas' to de towhead? [Huck] No, I didn't. What towhead? I hain't seen no towhead... [Jim] Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes? [Huck] Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen" (Twain 84). Huck's early purpose for lying also represents his emotional immaturity. He didn't care how his lies affected the people he told them to, but instead, he just enjoyed the pleasure he received from telling the lies.

As the adventure progresses and as he matures emotionally, his purpose for his lies also change. They are not for his own enjoyment anymore, but instead only a necessary precaution that is used when he thought he absolutely needed it. Although not too far towards the end of the book, Huck can be seen to responding to his emotional growth when he lies to the slave-hunters in chapter 16. Huck decides that he can't take the social pressure that's going through his mind between what his heart believes as right and what he's been grown up with in his society - Jim. "I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me... Do you belong on it [raft]?... I reckon we'll go adn see for ourselves. [Huck] 'I wish you would,' says I, 'because it's pap that's there... he's sick'" (Twain 89). As he feels the constant guilt about helping Jim run away, he finds slave-hunters and is about to turn Jim in, but at the last minute, decides not to because Jim has been so kind to him and left an impact on Huck. He lies in order to save Jim's life, a sure sign of his emotional maturity.

In the end, Huck resorts to lying when he needed it. Instead, Huck began to tell the truth because he knew that it was right, even though it was harder and riskier. "Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to" (Twain 186). When Huck told the truth to Mary Jane, it was an important turning point in his life because he constantly leaned closer towards his heart in the battle between his heart and his social conscience. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but because Huck knew that what the Duke and the King were doing was wrong, he told the truth since it was right. Although at first Huck starts off as an immature boy that lied because it provided excitement and laughter inside, he grows and changes into a more mature person, and all this is shown through his developing use of lies.