Huck Finn Blog Entry 1 - Jennie Kuhn

I found one seemingly insignificant section of chapter 12 to be particularly telling of the relationship developments between Huck and Jim. In chapter 11, Huck discovers the three hundred dollar reward out for Jim, spurring their spontaneous flight from Jackson’s Island. Huck details the first few days of their travel in depth; he describes that “we catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness” (67). Although their interactions together are “solemn” (67) in this particular section, they come across as unified, and even intimate. Twain repeatedly uses the pronoun “we”, binding them together in name. Huck and Jim’s flight from the island, spurred by Huck’s concern about Jim’s discovery, has brought them together. On the river, they “pass…towns, some of them away up on black hillsides” (67). Their shared rejection of society and conjoined isolation becomes apparent as they drift down the river and observe the little cities as “nothing but just a shiny bed of lights” (67). Stranded on this raft with only each other, running from anyone who might find Jim or recognize Huck, they view the surrounding society from a distance that only non-participants can understand. There is something profound and hopeful about the way that Huck and Jim, in the very midst of escaping their previous lives, still look at those towns together and “see the whole world lit up” (67).