Huck Finn 4

      After the fiasco with the dead man's will, Huck and Jim try to get away from the duke and dauphin, who have started to have secret conversations with one another on the raft.  Jim begins to worry that they are plotting to turn against him.  The next time they stop at a town along the river, Jim waits at the raft while Huck goes with the con men.  After the con men get in a fight in town, Huck goes back to the raft to find that Jim is missing.  After acquiring information from a local boy, Huck realizes that the dauphin had given up Jim to a local farmer named Silas Phelps.  Huck finds himself at a mental crossroads here as he contemplates the morality of his journey and what to do next.  He knows that if he continues to help Jim, he will be shamed in his town, but he thinks about the kind of honest man that Jim is and decides that he will continue to help him even if it is considered sinful by the people of his town.  He goes back on his earlier word that he would never let his conscience influence his decision and resolves to find Jim and continue to help him escape.  This is a major turning point in the novel as it marks the transition of Huck as somebody who is never quite sure of himself to somebody who can confidently make his own decisions.  At this point, he is no longer the boy who followed Tom Sawyer's lead in a make-believe gang, but a man who is willing to do what he thinks is right, even if it means doing the opposite of what society tells him is acceptable.

      On his way through town, Huck encounters the Duke, who tells him that Jim is at the Phelps Farm. On his way to the farm, Huck cannot help but think that God is watching over him, leading the way to the farm.  This demonstrates more character development from the earlier Huck, who simply thought God to be some sort of magic, wish-granting genie, and did not really fully understand.  Now, however, he sees that God is more than that.  He sees the spiritual value in Him more than the materialistic value that he focused on before.

      When Huck arrives at the farm, he is greeted by a woman named Sally, who is under the impression that Huck is her nephew, Tom, who was meant to come visit a few days ago.  As he had done so many times before, Huck seizes the opportunity and plays along with this charade.  However, it later comes up that the "Tom" who Huck is pretending to be is really Tom Sawyer.  Upon realizing this, Huck heads to the dock in order to meet up with the real Tom and inform him of the situation at hand.  When Tom gets there, he agrees to help Huck to free Jim.  This is especially significant due to the fact that for most of Huck's life, including in the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he has been under Tom's leadership.  However, now it is the case that Huck is the one leading an "adventure" while Tom takes on the role of an assistant.  However, Huck becomes frustrated when Tom reverts back to his usual romantics, insisting that the rescue must be made in the most theatrical manner possible, or else it is not a real escape.  Unlike Huck, who is grounded in reality, Tom does not seem to grasp the concept that this rescue really could result in death for any of the three involved.  In Tom's mind, it is probably similar to the make-believe gang that pretended to rob fake stagecoaches.  Sure enough, Tom Sawyer seizes control of the operation, and the power is constructed in much the same way as it was for most of the story.

      Despite the fact that Tom's Hollywood-esque preparations have attracted a mob of farmers armed with shotguns who hope to thwart the operation, the three make it back to the canoe with Tom's leg bleeding from a bullet wound.  After escaping, Huck sends for a doctor, and ultimately the three of them wind up back at the Silas's, only this time Jim is chained at the hands and feet.  However, he is unchained when Silas hears of Jim's heroism - another sign that his morals are not different from those of a white man.

      At this point, Huck begins to wonder if his father has taken Huck's huge fortune yet, but Jim tells him that it is not possible because the dead man on the bed was Pap.  Jim simply did not want Huck to see, so he said nothing of it.

      Jim gets his freedom when he finds out that Miss Watson wrote in her will that he would be freed at her death and had actually died two months ago.  Huck decides that he is through trying to be civilized and heads west with the new found knowledge that black men are not so different from white men after all.