Francesca Cricchio
Journal for Twain
English 48B
February 21, 2011
“when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was;” (246).
“The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.” (Description of Huckleberry Finn from Wikipedia).
Chapter 31 opens with Huck and Jim heading down the river with their new “friends” The King and the Duke. Huck grows suspicious with the new visitors and plans to escape on the raft with Jim the moment they reach shore. Things go awry when the King heads in to town and the Duke and Huck follow shortly after. Huck manages to slip away from the Duke and heads back to the raft, only to find that Jim is missing. Huck walks along the road and meets a boy who says that somebody (the King and Duke) told the town of Jim’s location for a reward of 40 dollars. Huck plans to write a letter to Miss Watson explaining what happened so that he feels “washed clean of sin” (246), but rips up the paper shortly after writing it. Huck then runs in to the Duke and asks what happened to Jim. Duke begins to tell Huck where he can find Jim, but the changes his mind and tells Huck the wrong place so that he can keep Huck away from him for a while. This is exactly what Huck had wanted. He pretends to head into the woods to the farm that Duke has told him to go to, but a mile into the walk he heads back to town to save Jim without the interruption of Duke and the King.
Mark Twain’s writing is very unique in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it is told through the eyes of a young boy, but deals with very serious, and mature issues. The most important of the issues is the one of racism. Huck travels the river with a runaway slave, and in chapter 31 he is forced to make a very adult decision. He knows that society wants him to turn Jim in. Twain writes, “I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie” (246). The “clean thing” being a religious reference to being clean of “sin”, and the “sin” being coercing with a slave. But Huck makes a very mature decision when he realizes that Jim is human just like everybody else. He realizes all that Jim has done for him out of love (as quoted above), and cannot bring himself to turn his friend in. This decision is very ahead of the rest of society, and it was great that Twain chose to create someone so young to make such adult decisions.
