Twain: Huck Finn (31-43)

Huck Finn: Twain

Section 3 (Chapters 31-43)

After a while, we all get tired of Tom, we’ve established that. I do think though that Tom has good intentions, but he’s just a boy with an imagination. He doesn’t realize that his “imagination” is affecting the real lives of Huck and Jim. Jim being sold into slavery by the con artists shows the readers that those men were bad from the start.

Twain uses these last chapters to really do some human being damage. What I mean by that is, throughout the entire story, humanity has been put on a pedestal and mocked. It has been shown how cruel and terrible Americans were to people. Humanity does not exist in this world for Jim and Huck and Twain does a good job of making the readers really feel the pain. After we learn of the softer side of Jim, we see he has HUMAN emotions, which for people back in those days, these didn’t think that slaves were even human (which is just crazy because they were living just like them).  

During the time when Tom is helping Huck get Jim out, I realized how stupid Tom is… he yells at Huck for doing or stealing stuff, but yet he steals all this stuff for the “adventure” even though they do not need it because Jim is not guarded.  I don’t know if Twain is just playing up the story here or really what he wants us to gain from this section of the novel, but I start to really despise Tom and literally start cheering for Jim and Huck.

So to fast forward, Tom goes above and beyond with trying to free the already free Jim. When he gets shots and disappears the family (Phelps) are sad. I am confused here because I thought this was all made up.  Either way, they see Jim and a hero because he helped to save Tom. Jim is again given human like feelings and is finally considered a “man.”

I love how Twain ended on a happy note. I think that if this story had ended any other way it would not have been affective. I think that Huck and Jim being the “underdogs” help great importance to the overall “affect” of the story. I can understand why this novel would have caused trouble during its era because it really opens your eyes as to what the American life was like. Twain dibbled his fingers into every lifestyle during this time and showed how fake it was or how “unreal” is. The only real people in this novel were Huck and Jim and yet they were the most uneducated and less respected persons of the entire plot. Crazy huh? Kudos Twain.. Kudos.