In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the main character Huck, makes two very
important decisions. The first one is how he treats Jim when he first meets him
at Jackson’s Island and the second is to tear up the letter to Miss Watson
because he cares deeply for Jim. When Huck first runs away from Pap he goes to
Jackson’s Island and thinks that he is the only person there. He soon finds
out that this is not true, and that "Miss Watsons Jim"1 , is taking
crap there as well. Many people would hate to be alone on an island with a
"nigger"2 , but Huck is happy to have someone to talk with. At first
Jim thinks he sees Hucks ghost and is scared. Huck gets Jims feelings by
changing the subject and saying "It’s good daylight, le’s get
breakfast"3 , showing that Huck is not only real but he does not mind that
Jim is black. Jim feels that Huck might tell on him for running away, but he
then decides that it will be okay to tell him why he ran away from Miss Watson.
Jim keeps asking Huck if he is going to tell anyone about his running away, and
Huck say’s "People would call me a low down abolitionist and despise me
for keeping mum but that don’t make no difference I aint gonna tell"4 .
Hucks response truly shows that his ignorance has no showing over his kindness.
When taken into consideration good decisions are much more important in the long
run than being the smartest person. After traveling with Jim for quite some time
Huck begins to feel bad about harboring a runaway slave. He decides to write a
letter to Miss Watson explaining the whole story, because Jim had been sold and
he does not know where he is. Huck was indeed confused about what he should do
so he dropped he dropped to his knees and began to pray. He felt by helping Jim
he was committing a sin, but he later realized "you can’t pray a
lie"5 . Huck saying this shows that he feels what he has done for Jim is
not wrong; instead what others had done to Jim is wrong. Still not sure of what
to do about the whole situation Huck writes the letter to Miss Watson, thinking
he will be "cleaned of sin"6 and not feel so bad about what he is
doing. After writing this letter of confession to Miss Watson, Huck starts to
reminisce about the times he had with Jim. As he is thinking he comes across the
times Jim would be "standing my watch on top of his’n, stead of calling
me so I could go on sleeping"7 . Huck begins to realize that he would not
be able to "strike no places to harden me against him"8 , showing that
he realizes that Jim has done nothing but good for him. Huck looks at what he is
doing and feels ashamed. He takes one final look at the letter before saying
"all right then, I’ll go to hell"9 and then rips up the letter of
confession. The fact that Huck looked back at his times with Jim before deciding
to tear up the letter shows that the decision was obviously made conscientiously
through his decisions. Hucks decisions have a major efect on the way he treats
Jim at Jackson’s Island and in his decision to tear up the confession letter
to Miss Watson. The way that these decisions are made shows that Huck does
indeed have a good set of morals, which he uses to make his decisions. With Huck
being only a young kid and Jim being much older, I think that it is easy to say
that Mark Twain grew up in a area that was just like that when he was a young
kid and also I believe that he was against slavery. It was probably something to
do with someone he knew or something like that, he probably made friends with a
slave and realized that they have lives to.