Amer Ahmed

Green

Huckleberry Finn Log 2

When Huckleberry Finn and Jim pick up two scallywags at the edge of a river,

they don’t know what to expect. Huck and Jim are ready for anything and will take on

anything as it comes their way, but the two men, scam artists no less, take advantage of

Jim’s good nature and Huck’s unwillingness to disturb the peace. This hilarious series of

scenes between the four men allows us to see what Mark Twain wanted us to understand

without falling asleep between the pages.

The men were pretending to be royalty, where the younger man posed as a Duke

while the older man posed as heir to the throne in France. Mark Twain purposely must

have used absurd and impossible examples to help out the stories of the con men; they

could have chosen to be wealthy bankers or wealthy plantation owners, or anything more

believable than two descendents of royalty. Huck Finn tell us that he caught on right

along, but Huck also says Jim did not. When taking Huck’s account at face value, we can

say Jim is ignorant, stupid, and unwitting. However, Jim says that it is a huge surprise as

to how there can be two separate royal figures on the boat. Immediately, as a reader, we

can pick up sarcasm in Jim’s voice (as long as we are reading deeply). Huck Finn, being

young, does not understand sarcasm yet, but Jim shows us that he understands the men

are frauds by his actions to the men. For example, Jim constantly (more than once) asks

the French “descendant” to speak French, but the man says he had forgotten the language.

Now why would Mark Twain put this little tidbit in here if it didn’t mean anything?

Jim is truly the father figure Huck never had, and Twain makes Jim out to be the

human element and voice of reason in the novel. The two “royal” men makes Huck and
Jim watch the boat at night while they sleep in their beds. Huck and Jim devised a

system in which they would wake each other up in shifts. Jim, however, often refuses to

wake up Huck in order to let him sleep. Huck merely questions Jim’s actions here, but

the truth behind it is Huck is the son Jim never had, and Jim is the father Huck never had.

Jim is stable, caring, and mature enough to raise Huck like a son, and Jim also teaches

Huck the ways of life, even if he did not mean to. For instance, one time Jim is sleeping,

Huck notices Jim is mumbling in his dreams. Huck hears Jim calling out to his wife and

daughter, and Huck comes to the revelation that Jim is a human, and that Jim could

possibly love his family almost as much as a while person can love theirs. This is a huge

moment in Huck’s life because Huck finally moved away from the white and racist

standard of living he was raised in and opened his mind, and it sets up Huck’s actions in

later chapters. Huck begins to sympathize with Jim (even though he doesn’t realize it at

point blank) as Jim tells Huck about how he used to beat his daughter because he didn’t

realize she was deaf, and Huck listens and begins to sympathize with him.