Huck

In addition, Twain uses the river to draw links between Huck’s youth and Jim’s status as a black man. When the fog causes Huck and Jim to miss Cairo, Huck and Jim are forced to spend more time together and this time on the river gradually forces Huck to question the facts that white society has taught him. Huck significantly matures when Jim is captured. Despite this mind set Huck is still content with Jim’s companionship on their raft, where he does not answer to anyone. “There was heaps of old greasy cards, scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures, made of charcoal” (Twain, 104). He searches for an answer in the social and religious systems that society has taught him, yet soon denies his belief in them because he cares too much to refute Jim’s friendship. We see that Huck, although open-minded, still largely subscribes to the Southern white conception of the world. Throughout the novel Huck is willing to come to his own conclusions about important matters, even if these contradict society’s norms. The house holds contents, human vices that symbolize the darkness of society and foolish acts in which people take part. In Chapter 9 the tilted over house, washed from the banks by the river, reminds Huck of the looming threat from outside. The intrusions and the characters Huck encounters further persuade him to question the norms imposed by white folk and he eventually decides that he would rather go to hell than for Jim to suffer unjustly at the bloody hands of a system that places a white man’s rights to his “property” over the welfare and freedom of a black man. Twain makes it clear to the reader at this point that when Huck acts like Tom Sawyer, trouble proceeds, but when he is himself, when he seeks to interpret and react to experience in a sensible manner he is able to avoid damage. At this point Huck decides to reject conventional morality and rely on his conscience. In chapter ten, Huck demonstrates a similar act of idiocy by placing a dead rattlesnake near Jim’s sleeping place and causing the dead snakes mate to bit the runaway slave.