“It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger- but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way”(98).

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, throughout the book Huck and Jim characters develop and enrich through the company of each other. At the beginning of the novel we see Jim as Miss Watsons’ slave, and Huck as an uneducated white boy that Miss Watson is trying to conform to be “sivilized”. Twain challenges the readers on the idea of Huck’s character, and whether through the novel we see his growth and companionship develop with Jim or if we see Huck as a people pleasure in his beliefs. Does Huck change the way he thinks about slavery depending on the group that he is in front of or is he growing in the direction to fight for one belief?

In this scene, Jim and Huck previously gotten into an argument concerning the fact that Huck is trying to challenge Jim’s stance on the dream and the fog. Jim sees it as Huck talking to him in a way that isn’t respectful; he is talking to him like a nigger. This scene shows Huck in either a role-play situation or Huck’s stance on slavery and how it hasn’t truly change from the beginning. In the role-play situation Huck is playing an individual that is stubborn, and wouldn’t take the word of a nigger. On the other hand Huck could be showing his true thoughts and beliefs on slavery and how he truly sees Jim as only a nigger that must be wrong about the dream because he is a nigger.

When Huck says, “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger.”(98), the first thought that comes to mind is that Huck is white and Jim is black. The way that Huck presents the idea that he has to take time to decide whether Jim deserves an apology or not. He isn’t deciding whether he gets an apology based on if he was wrong or right, it was whether as a nigger Jim deserves an apology. In the fifteen minutes that Huck took to decide to apologize or not, the reader wonders whether Huck is questioning his character and deciding on the right thing to do based on his beliefs. On the other hand could Huck just be swallowing is pride in order to make the rest of their way bearable.

In the second half of the passage Huck says, “I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way”(98). To the reader it brings out the more sentimental side of Huck and his relationship with Jim. He talks about his feelings toward Jim concerned that he hurt his feelings, and made him sad. This bring the genuine character of Huck out and readers start to think, wow this kid is truly growing up and becoming his own person who fights against the horrible idea and law of slavery. Is Twain using this fake illusion of Huck becoming a nice boy to show that you as a reader are going to fall for it and at the end you will be fooled in thinking the Huck would change his ways and fight against society. In the end will readers see that Twain is laughing at the readers, and is wondering how an individual that is young change his views on slavery when put into a society that would eat him alive if he revolted against the standard view of pro-slavery.

In conclusion, Twain plays with the minds of the reader on the idea if Huck's character through out the novel grows and learns or if he is just smarter then everyone and tricks people into thinking he has changed and grown into a better person. This could be represented as humorous to Twain to see the reader struggle whether to believe Huck and love him or take him as a fraud. Also challenging the idea that during this time period a little boy could stand up and take on a society, and be anti-slavery and save his best friend Jim. This passage challenges the idea of the ending of the adventure Huck is having with Jim, and the realistic ending of Jim being caught and sold, and possibly never reuniting with his family.