1084 Twain, Mark
whom Huck is morally obligated to return to his
owner. What changes is not how other people
perceive Huck but, rather, how Huck perceives
his own actions and interactions with Jim. Help-
ing an escaped slave means breaking the law and
being called a “low down Ablitionist” by his friends
and neighbors—but neither of those things really
bothers Huck in the first place. The turning point
comes when Huck switches from worrying about
the hurt he might cause Miss Watson by aiding
Jim’s escape to worrying about the harm that might
befall Jim if he does not help him. In one of the
book’s most famous scenes, Huck decides he will
help Jim no matter the consequences, even if it
means going to hell.
This stands in sharp contrast to the treatment
of African Americans by most other characters and
even to Huck’s treatment of black characters else-
where in the novel. It cannot be denied that some
of Huck’s behavior is cruelly insensitive—he never
thanks the black woman who saves him from the
circling dogs, for instance, and he lets Tom Saw-
yer drag out Jim’s escape into a long and torturous
process. But he is also able to conceive of slaves as
people with feelings and families just like white
folks. The only other characters able to do this are
the Wilks girls. To everyone else, African Americans
are second-class citizens or, worse, mere property.
There is a chilling moment when Huck is asked
whether anyone was hurt in a steamboat explosion
he has invented as part of his tall tales. “No’m,” he
replies. “Killed a nigger.” It is difficult to gauge his
tone here. Huck is an actor who changes his story to
suit the listener. When he tells the duke he is upset
at losing Jim, for example, Huck says it is because
Jim was his only piece of property in the world, not
his only friend. This is because he realizes that the
duke would not be able to comprehend a friendship
between a white boy and a black man.
There are no easy conclusions to reach concerning
the novel’s treatment of race. Twain’s characteriza-
tion of Jim provides perhaps the best demonstration
of the contradictory ways race is presented in the
novel. Sometimes Twain shows the prejudices of
his age by turning Jim into a caricature, a cartoon
of a man, full of voodoo superstitions and comical
misunderstandings. But in many moments—espe-
cially when Jim relates the story about his daughter
‘Lizbeth and shows a tender, parental affection for
Huck—Jim is a fully developed, three-dimensional
human being whom the reader not only sympathizes
with but admires.
Cassandra NelsonreLIGIon in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck’s conception of morality is essentially a
Christian one—to treat your neighbor as yourself.
In the scene where conspiring thieves are about
to go down on a sinking wreck, he more or less
paraphrases the Golden Rule (admittedly in an
unconventional way): “I begun to think how dread-
ful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix.
I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might
come to be a murderer myself, yet, and then how
would I like it?”
This concern for others grows out of Huck’s
own capacity for empathy rather than any formal
religious training. He does not like Sunday School,
and religious allusions often fly right over his head.
When the widow calls Huck a “poor lost lamb” after
he runs away, he assures the reader that “she never
meant no harm by it.” Similarly, he is reluctant to
identify with Moses and dismisses the Old Testa-
ment deliverer of the Hebrews as irrelevant even
though the two actually have a lot in common: Both
were adopted as children and both help to free slaves
from bondage.
Nor is Huck’s concern for others motivated by a
belief in God. When he and Jim ponder the origin
of the stars, Huck cannot bring himself to accept the
existence of an entity large enough and long-lasting
enough to have created the heavens. Even Jim’s faith
does not sway him: “Jim he allowed they was made,
but I allowed they happened.”
Huck is unimpressed by most outward displays
of religion. He is especially put off by ostenta-
tious and hypocritical displays of religious senti-
ment, whether it is Miss Watson praying in the
closet—her overly literal interpretation of Mat-
thew 6:6 (“But you, when you pray, go into your
inner room”)—or the king capping off his fake and
obnoxious mourning for Peter Wilks with a “pious
goody-goody Amen.” Such carrying on makes Huck
ashamed of the human race.