Kohlberg states that people go through three different steps of morality in ascending order as we mature into adults. We start off at Step 1, Preconventional Morality. We think about whether we will get punished or rewarded for something. Step 2 is Conventional Morality. We think about how our community will view us. Step 3, is Postconventional Morality. What you feel is right and wrong.
If Mark Twain were alive in Kohlberg's day, he would see things a little different. In "The Adventures of Hucklberry Finn", Huck frees a slave from his master. Most of the adults he met, had they all known, would have felt he had sinned. Huck Finn was stealing another mans property (a slave). Huck believed he would go to hell for freeing a slave. He was willing to sacrifice his soul, make the community very angry with him, and get punished for what he felt was doing the right thing.
Huck displayed the ability to move beyond the first two conventions and make decisions on the highest. A pattern in Mark Twain's books dealt with children in his stories doing the right thing, and the older people being too corrupt to do so. Mark Twain would agree with the order of Kohlberg's morality and the different types, but would believe we would go from step 1 to step 3, and as adults conform to societal norms falling to step 2, a lower moral thought process.
It's really interesting to see that you applied Kohlberg's findings to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn seeing as, though it obviously works, it isn't what most would first go to.
It's funny, isn't it, how what defines "right" and "wrong" behavior changes over time. In modern times the story makes good sense, but set in the period that it portrays, the characters have to grapple with what is socially right and what is morally right.
Twain definitely set up his younger characters with very high morality. Looking above all of society's conceptions and stepping out of bounds to do what they feel is right. Its really out there to compare Kohlberg and Twain, but I see the connection you made. You would think adults should find it much easier to reach to Step 3, thank teens.
This post is a great application of the three stages of morality! It's interesting that Mark Twain essentially skipped the second stage of morality with his Huck Finn character and makes me wonder if his characters reflected his own views of morality...