Critical Response To Jim's Escape

Twain does not let the reader thing badly of Huck for very long, though, having Huck?s true voice shine out by the end of the confrontation. By page 67 Huck is almost loathing to go and turn Jim in, seeing the act as an obligation rather than a moral right. He says, "Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I got to do it-I can?t get out of it." Twain wants the reader to see Huck?s change in judgment. The reader is able to see Huck?s newfound reluctance, brought on by Jim?s words of appreciation. These words bring Huck back to the realization that Jim is a friend, not property. And

They see a town and decide Huck should go and see if this town is Cairo. Huck plans to give up Jim when they get to the city but Jim says, “Huck; you’s be de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now” (Twain 135). Huck struggles with whether or not he will turn Jim in. As Huck is paddling to the shore, he meets a few men who want to search his raft for escaped slaves. Huck concocts an elaborate lie and acts grateful to the men, saying no one else will help them. He convinces the men that his family on that raft has smallpox. The men, deathly afraid of smallpox, leave Huck forty dollars out of pity and leave. Here, Huck actively decides not to turn Jim in. Huck gets closer to realizing that Jim is a person that deserves rights. Huck struggles between what he thinks is right and what society thinks is right. Huck starts to think for himself, branching out from what society has told him to do from when he was a boy. This is a great leap for Huck in his growing maturity and morality.

The main character of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn, undergoes a complete moral change while having to make life changing and moral questioning decisions throughout his journey on the river. Huck appears first as a morally inferior character caused by living with a self absorbed and abusive father, because of his alcoholic habits. Throughout the whole book Huck is guided by Jim, a runaway slave who goes with him and helps Huck gain his sense of morality. During these encounters, he is in many situations where he must look within and use his judgement to make decisions that will affect Huck’s morals.

When out of society, Huck leisurely grasps the concept of making good decisions. Twain interweaves layers of complexity through Huck. By giving him the capacity for both good and evil, it’s evident if society governs the mind, a deformed conscious would be created. The challenge that arise from this is Huck’s inability to choose between his deformed conscious or to listen to his heart. For instance, when Huck meets Jim, his first image of him is a “silhouette.”( ) Knowing Jim was a runaway slave, Twain has Huck contemplate turning Jim in order to portray a struggle between doing a morally satisfying deed, or to surrender to society. Hucks’s brain was wired to perceive helping slaves was a bad thing to do, but his good heart resulted with Huck making the correct decision. Being in society infects a mind. Huck questions, "What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor

Mark Twain shows Huck’s inner conflict over Jim being a slave and whether Huck should turn Jim in or not. In the novel, as Huck and Jim travel along the river, Huck struggles with the dilemma of turning in his friend, a slave, Jim. Back to Mrs. Watson. “Conscience says to me, “What had poor

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn satirizes gratuitous violence, excessive greed, and racism. First, Twain illustrates the satire in the gratuitous violence with the backwater families and the rural country people starting with the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. Huck first meets the Grangerfords when Huck and Jim’s raft breaks apart and Huck ends up on a shore. Huck meets Buck Grangerford who asks if Huck is a part of the Shepherdson family, in which Huck responds that he is not. Buck explains to him that the Grangerfords and the Shepherdson’s have been in a feud with each other for as long as the families can remember, however, no one knows or can even remember how or why these two families are fighting. Twain goes on to explain that the two families even go to church with their rifles while the priest preaches about love and peace. Twain also uses Boggs and Sherburn to further satirize these nonsensical violent habits. Boggs, who is very drunk, keeps causing a ruckus and speaking ill of Sherburn. Sherburn tells him to stop, but Boggs does not listen, so Sherburn shoots and kills Boggs. Soon after a mob forms declaring that they must kill Sherburn in retaliation. Sherburn tells the mob that they do not have the prowess to go through with their plan to kill him. He says that “Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man’s safe in the hands of

Throughout the novel, Twain shows his contempt for corrupt human nature. Although these instances are often satirized and exaggerated, the message is still the same. For instance, when the King and the Duke first start to lie about being the dead Peter Wilks’ brothers to obtain his money, Huck says, “It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race,” (191). In this instance Twain is utilizing Huck to show his aversion to the way people lie and cheat, and how a couple of people can make a bad name for all of us. Another example is when Jim sells the King and Duke out to the townspeople and they are carried on a pole, tarred and feathered. Although Huck, has tried to escape the King and Dukes several occasions and has witnessed the cruelties put on others and lies they tell, he does not think that they deserve similar treatment. In fact, he says, “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another,” (269). Through Huck, Twain is voicing his opposition to how people treat one another, whether they deserve it or not. Thus Twain is using his novel to voice his enmity for the cruelty in human nature.

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain presents the problem of slavery in America in the 19th Century. Twain poses this problem in the form of a character named Huckleberry Finn, a white boy raised in the antebellum South. Huck starts to question his view regarding slavery when he acquaints himself more intimately with a runaway slave while he himself tries to run away. Huck’s development as a character is affected by society’s influence on his experiences while growing up in the South, running away with Jim, and trying to save Jim. Although Huck decides to free Jim, Huck’s deformed conscience convinces him that he is doing the wrong thing.

Throughout the incident on pages 66-69 in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck fights with two distinct voices. One is siding with society, saying Huck should turn Jim in, and the other is seeing the wrong in turning his friend in, not viewing Jim as a slave. Twain wants the reader to see the moral dilemmas Huck is going through, and what slavery ideology can do to an innocent like Huck.

The first time when Huck Finn is pulled in conflicting desires is when he finds Miss Watson's runaway slave, Jim, at Jackson's Island. Huck knows that if he doesn't turn the runaway slave in to his owner, "People would call [him] a low-down Abolitionist and despise (him) for keeping mum. " (Twain 43). Then later in the novel when he tries to write to Miss Watson that he knew where Jim was, he doesn't because " she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again." (Twain 212). The conflict within Huck Finn illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole because during the novel Huck develops affection for Jim are through he is challenging societal norms. When Huck tears up the letter when he remembers the time Jim said that "[he] was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now." (Twain 214)

Twain uses Huck to make decisions based on this hypocritical slave-owning, Christian lifestyle. Huck must choose to either aid a runaway slave named Jim or return him to Miss Watson, while the white society of the South would expect Huck to return Jim to Miss Watson. Huck and Jim 's friendship makes this a significant decision because Huck is morally conflicted. Jim is his friend, but he is also the property of Miss Watson. An excerpt from Magill 's Survey of American Literature puts the situation in a right perspective exclaiming “Jim is property before he is man, and Huck is deeply troubled, surprisingly, by the thought that he is going to help Jim, not only because he sees it, in part, as a robbery, but more interestingly, because he sees his cooperation as a betrayal of his obligation to the

Twain’s purpose in writing that part was to get people to realize and understand how ridiculous it is to treat someone differently just because of the way they look. Twain’s depiction of Huck’s moral struggle has been just one of the ways he gets his readers to understand the idea he was trying to convey. Throughout the book, Huck begins to gradually change his views on the issues of racism and slavery. He is quoted saying, “Alright then, I’ll go to hell.” (p.195) Right before tearing up a letter he wrote to Miss Watson telling her where Jim was. Huck realizes that he would feel even more guilty if he turned in his friend. Throughout the book, it had been hard for Huck to separate himself from society’s view of African Americans, and this part is a definite turning point for him, but also an important lesson. Huck’s decision reminds the reader that society doesn’t always know what is best, and makes people realize that the right decision might not always be the popular one. As Huck’s friendship with Jim begins to form as the book progresses, he soon realizes that his perception of Jim and other African Americans isn’t entirely

Jim is a runaway slave. He lived on Jackson’s island across the river from where the community he was originally at. By being a runaway slave, Jim is breaking the law. He is owned by another human, Miss Watson. Jim is considered the legal material property of another person. Huck rejects this legal law, and agrees to help Jim break the law by escaping. Huck is shocked at himself for doing this and even believes he will go to hell for his actions. But Huck decides to choose friendship over what society tells him to do. When Huck and Jim are on the adventure down the Mississippi, their friendship grows stronger and stronger. They depend on each other to survive. Huck attempts to turn in Jim. When Huck and Jim came to the shore by a town. Huck gets off and looks for someone to report Jim. However, Huck runs into some white people wanting to capture runaway slaves. They Huck if he had any others in the boat with him. Huck get scared for Jim and told them that there was his mom, dad and sister in the boat and they all had small pox. By doing this, Huck puts his heart ahead of his head. Huck and Jim returns to St. Petersburg. Jim gets to be free, although Huck doesn’t realize that. Huck saw Jim in a building thinking that Jim was now a slave that couldn’t leave the plantation. So he got Tom Sawyer and then Tom wanted to plan out a way to get Jim out. The plan that Tom had was ridiculous because they could just walk in and take Jim away. Huck tried to point that out to Tom but, as stubborn as Tom is, they did Tom’s plan. A while later, they finally got Jim

Twain uses colloquial diction to convey Huck’s struggle between the values of his southern upbringing, which urge him to return Jim, and his strong friendship and loyalty with Jim, which encourage him to protect the runaway. Although Huck lacks education, Huck interprets the laws in ways that are morally sound, an interpretation that most educated people fail to understand, while they blindly accept the injustice of slavery. Throughout the novel, Twain makes use of uneducated diction and syntax to convey an ironic contrast between Huck’s ability to discern between moral and immoral actions and his lack of education.

Many aspects of the novel that initially drew me in ended up staying true to their claim and impressing me even more than I originally expected. For instance, the complexity of the characters, specifically Jim, is simply astounding. To demonstrate, despite being on the brink of achieving freedom, Jim chooses to take the chance of losing it when he refuses to leave an injured Tom behind whilst saying that he “‘doan' budge a step out'n dis place 'dout a DOCTOR, not if it's forty year!”’ (Twain 275). This not only depicts Jim’s selfless nature, but also portrays the full extent exactly how far he is willing to go for his friends. To elaborate, his original reason for abandoning his mistress was in order to achieve freedom for himself and his family. However, after learning to cherish the time and memories he and Huck have spent together on the raft, Jim risks failing to achieve his one goal in order to make sure his friends are safe. Another prominent feature of the novel is the method in which they address the topic of racism and slavery. Again portrayed through the character Jim, Twain interweaves threads of racism into his actions and speech in order to depict the social hierarchy of the time period. To illustrate, although his personality can attribute for certain aspects of his actions, the audience truly learns to recognize the effects of institutionalized racism when Huck reveals that