The arguments Huck and Jim have over Huck’s stories
provide remarkable mini-allegories about slavery and race. When
Huck tells the tale of King Solomon, who threatened to chop a baby
in half, Jim argues that Solomon had so many children that he became
unable to value human life properly. Huck’s comments lead us to
compare Jim’s assessment of Solomon with whites’ treatments of blacks
at the time—as infinitely replaceable bodies, indistinguishable
from one another. Later, Huck tells Jim that people in France don’t
speak English. Huck tries to convince the skeptical Jim by pointing
out that cats and cows don’t “talk” the same, and that, by analogy,
neither should French people and American people. Jim points out
that both are men and that the analogy is inappropriate. Although
Jim is misinformed in a sense, he is correct in his assessment of
Huck’s analogy. Jim’s argument provides yet another subtle reminder
that, in American society at the time, not all men are treated as
men. Although Jim’s discussion with Huck shows that both have clever
minds, we see that Jim is less imprisoned by conventional wisdom
than Huck, who has grown up at least partly in mainstream white
society.
We see the moral and societal importance of Huck and Jim’s
journey in Huck’s profound moral crisis about whether he should
return Jim to Miss Watson. In the viewpoint of Southern white society, Huck
has effectively stolen $800—the price the
slave trader has offered for Jim—from Miss Watson. However, Jim’s
comment that Huck is the only white man ever to keep his word to
him shows that Huck has been treating Jim not as a slave but as
a man. This newfound knowledge, along with Huck’s guilt, keep Huck
from turning Jim in. Huck realizes that he would have felt worse
for doing the “right” thing and turning Jim in than he does for
not turning Jim in. When Huck reaches this realization, he makes
a decision to reject conventional morality in favor of what his
conscience dictates. This decision represents a big step in Huck’s
development, as he realizes that his conscience may be a better
guide than the dictates of the white society in which he has been
raised.
