Turning Points In Huck Finn

Huck grows more apologetic upon the next prank he pulls on Jim. While traveling on the river, Huck and Jim reach a point in their path where a dense fog rolls in, causing them to lose their way and get separated from each other. Huck takes advantage of the opportunity given by this natural event and decides to play another trick on Jim (94). However, Jim did not handle it too well since he is worried sick. This post fog scene is one of many turning points of Huck’s moral development. He knows that it was wrong of him to make a fool of Jim because it made him feel so mean that he could kiss Jim’s foot (95). Although Huck did not mean it in a literal sense, what he said is powerful because he would have to bend over and lie close to the ground

in order to plant a kiss on Jim’s foot. This will put him in a lower standing than Jim because Huck is physically lowering himself, which can be translated to Huck not seeing Jim as being less than human. However, apologizing is no easy task. It took him fifteen minutes to build up the courage to go and humble himself to a “nigger” (95). Such an apology is nearly unheard of during this time because a white man would never go out of his way to apologize to a black slave. Huck takes his apology a step further and says, “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” (95). This goes to show that Huck genuinely apologized and clearly recognized that he was stepping out of bounds for nearly giving Jim a heart attack. Society may condemn such a behavior, but that is not what Huck sees it as. After all, he is “a boy courageous enough to stand against the moral conventions of his society, to risk Hell itself rather than conform to the ‘sivilizing’ process of communities he rejects” (Bollinger 32). Such a change of dynamics highlights Huck’s moral position evolving.
Huck arrives at yet another moral crisis shortly after he and Jim paddle ashore to find out how far they are away from Cairo, Illinois, a free state. He expresses, “I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish…because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience” (110). According to the laws of his society, Huck is a wrongdoer because helping Jim escape to a free land is an unlawful act. The “trembly” and “feverish” feelings washing over him is a slap to his face because he is no longer a law-abiding citizen (110). It is one thing to lie and run away from home, but it is another thing to help a slave escape; in fact, they are not even fit to be compared on the same level. Internally, Huck knows that aiding Jim in Jim’s plan to escape is morally right; however, that conflicts with the written laws of society during this period. This leads Huck to a battle between two forces—internal and external; he faces the decision to either continue helping Jim escape or end it here and turn Jim over to the authorities. This tugs at his conscience because he feels as though he has a moral obligation to return Jim to Miss Watson. “But having made this sincere judgment, Huck decides to wash his hands entirely of moral demands, to defy his own moral judgments in favor of his friendship” with Jim (Goldman 2).
He is even more conflicted when he overhears Jim talking about what he wants to do the minute he sets foot on a free state, such as buying back his wife and two children. If for any reason the slave master refuses to sell them, Jim will go to any lengths to get them back, even if it means getting an abolitionist to go and steal them (110). This scene depicts society’s influence on Huck because he feels obligated to abide by societal norms and expectations. From a biological standpoint, Jim is entitled to his wife and two children; they are his family, so there is no reason for them to not belong to him. Huck, on the other hand, believes otherwise. Jim’s wife and children belong to their slave master, not Jim. Therefore, Huck will get two strikes for stealing Jim enabling Jim to steal more slaves from the rightful owners.
Huck’s guilt-ridden conscious continues to eat away at him, and the only way he knew how to end this is to turn Jim in. He states, “‘I’ll paddle ashore at the first light, and tell.’ I felt easy, and happy, and light as a feather, right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself” (111). This fleeting feeling of joy exists because it is always easier to join the crowd and go along with the dominant social practices other than one’s own beliefs. It is less challenging to agree that all black people should be enslaved or that they are less than human beings than it is to disagree and fight for their freedom. The costs of doing so are heavy because Huck risks putting his own life on the line to save another life. However, it is a life that is deemed less valuable because it belongs not to a white man, but to a black man. Therefore, if one chooses to alienate oneself from the white community and take the unconventional route, which in this case would be to help Jim, then one is bound to receive punishment. Fortunately for Jim, Huck does not see him of lesser value. Instead, Huck sees Jim as his equal, so when things come to a close, Huck does what he wants, and does not submit to white culture. His moral position overrides what society rules as just because he transcends the powers of conventional society by “virtue of a spontaneous and untutored goodness” (Levy 383).
Wherever Huck goes, moral actions and dilemmas will surely follow; he cannot escape them.

He gets into all sorts of conflicts that force him to battle and work his way out of them, and in turn, they propel his moral position’s evolvement. It is especially hard on Huck when it comes time to resolving moral dilemmas. He is always stuck between making his own moral decisions, be it conventional or not, or allowing influencers, his father, the widow, and society, to make the decisions for him. He can never let go of the guilt associated with taking the unconventional path and rejecting what society upholds because that is all he has ever been taught in his life. That is why it is hard to apologize to Jim at first, but given time Huck is able to muster the courage to do so because that is the right thing to do even when society says so otherwise. The same goes for helping a slave, such as Jim, escape to a free state where he can find the opportunity to reunite with his family. Ultimately, he violates the demands of society to do what is right and not contribute to the enslavement of another human being. And it is not until the end of the novel that Huck no longer views his decisions as moral failings, but instead as moral triumph because he stayed true to himself and not once did he allow society to dictate his

actions.