Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapter 31 - 43
The raft makes its way into the deeper South, and the conmen begin to enact various farces to make more money but they find no success. Jim and Huck observe warily as the men begin to put their heads together and whisper their plans. They reach a town, and the king goes out ahead of the duke and Huck. The other two follow the king into town later onwards and find him drunk. Huck retraces his steps and goes to the raft to find Jim gone, he looks about town and discovers that the king had taken forty dollars for giving people Jim’s whereabouts after showing them the fake wanted poster that the duke had made for Jim. Huck finds himself in a moral quandary and believes that informing Miss Watson about Jim would be better for Jim as he could be a slave where he had once been before. However, he is unable to make peace with that arrangement and ultimately decides to free Jim from his captors, a course of action that he believes will doom him to hell. He learns that Jim is being held by a local farmer called Silas Phelps, and he runs into the duke, who is preparing for their next con. The duke gives him a fake story about how Jim had come to be captured and misleads him about his actual location.
Huck goes to the Phelps farm without a plan and trusts himself to providence, but when he arrives, Huck is welcomed in as Tom. Huck begins to play the part of Tom, which comes to him all the more easily when he learns that the family had been expecting Tom Sawyer. He grows worried about what would happen when Tom does arrive and goes out to catch on his way. Tom Sawyer is stumped to see Huck, for he had believed that Huck had been killed, but Huck convinces him that he is not a ghost and informs him about his plans to rescue Jim. Surprisingly, Tom is quite willing to help Huck free Jim, which somehow lessens Huck’s estimation of him. Tom arrives and pretends to be Sid Sawyer, Tom’s brother. The two boys escape from their rooms at night and witness the king and duke being carried after being both tarred and feathered. Huck feels some remorse for their condition and understands that it had only been possible due to Jim informing his captors about the nature of the king and duke.
Huck defers Tom in planning the escape of Jim, which at first seems quite straightforward as Uncle Silas keeps Jim under a light guard. However, Tom cannot conceive anything to be too simple, and he begins to purposefully complicate the escape plan to add style. Jim and Huck are reluctant to go along with the plan but ultimately trust in Tom’s judgment. Tom has Jim live with rats, snakes, spiders, and carve messages on plates with sharpened candlesticks. They make Jim carry a stone into his prison so that he can etch inscriptions on it, and even warn Uncle Silas about a gang of robbers that intend to steal away Jim. The whole thing causes the whole town a lot of grief as farmers stand guard over Jim with guns, but the boys can escape with Jim, who has spent the last three weeks working tirelessly as a prisoner. However, Tom is injured by a stray bullet during the escape, and Jim refuses to sail away on the raft until Huck fetches a doctor. Huck finds a doctor, but he is forced to remain in town, and the doctor does not return the next day, which is when Huck is found by Uncle Silas who returns him to the house where Tom’s aunt worries over him and his brother ‘Sid.’
Tom arrives on a stretcher the next day with the doctor in the lead, and Jim tied up behind them. The crowd wants to hang Jim, but the doctor vouches for Jim’s decent behavior and assistance in treating Tom. Tom awakens from his fever and tells his aunt the whole story about the plans they had made for Jim’s escape, and he also reveals that Miss Watson had passed away a month ago. She had left behind a will that bestowed Jim his freedom, and the matter is confirmed when Aunt Polly arrives. Jim is released and treated with much kindness, and he reveals to Huck that his father had a way for he had seen his body after the rain on the island near St Petersburg. Huck decides to head out west since he has no intentions of returning to the town to be civilized.
Analysis
In this section, Huck goes through a moral conundrum as he learns about Jim’s capture by the farmers. Huck understands that helping Jim would set him completely against society, and therefore attempts to write back to the original owner of Jim. However, he is unable to bring himself to do so because the journey with Jim has allowed him to see that slaves are equal to their owners. He decides to have himself damned instead of allowing Jim to go on with being a slave. On the other hand, Huck says that his consideration for Tom Sawyer decreases when the boy agrees to help him free Jim.
The farce and comedy elements that had been quite evident in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer return in Huckleberry Finn in these final chapters. This return is brought about by the entry of Tom Sawyer, who makes the reader question his true intentions. The actual means of freeing Jim are pretty straightforward, but Tom complicates the matter to such a high degree that the whole town becomes involved in the process. Huck and Jim question Tom’s plans but ultimately decide to go along with them because they are unused to being in control and more accustomed to taking orders.
