Throughout the pages of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck
fights with two distinct voices. One is siding with popular opinion, saying Huck
should turn Jim in, and the other is realizing the wrong in turning his friend in, not
viewing Jim as a slave. Twain wants the reader to see the moral difficulty Huck is
going through, and what slavery can do to a person who is pure like Huck.
Huck does not think about Jim's impending freedom until Jim himself
starts to get excited about the idea. Huck's first objection to Jim is gaining his
freedom, when Huck says, "Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and
feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was
most free-and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I could get that out of my
consciounce, no how nor no way." I think that that was the popular opinion not his
own. Huck did not realize at this point that he was just falling other peoples values
at this time. Huck totally misunderstood slavery. Huck does not treat Jim like a
slave when they traveled together, Huck treated Jim as a friend.
Huck saw having a slave only as owning the person. Not actually being
a slave to someone. Therefore, when he helps Jim runaway it would be like stealing.
His conscience is telling him that Miss Watson, Jim's master, never did anything
wrong to him and that he shouldn't be doing anything wrong to her by helping Jim
escape. Miss Watson's view is totally different from than Huck's perspective. Huck
always disliked Miss Watson, but now that this society voice plays a part in Huck's
judgment his views are changed. Society's view allows Huck to see Jim, a friend,
only as a slave and Miss Watson, almost a foe in his young views, as a dear friend.
Twain is showing the reader the injustices of slavery in this little story,
as well as his moral opinion to slavery...