Huck/Jim Encounter 10 - Chapter 16

The reader can't help but notice the contrast between the beginning of this chapter which opens with Huck observing that they slept most of the day, and as they started out at night noticed a long raft:

WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.  She had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely.  She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end.  There was a power of style about her.

Wait.
You just had a powerful encounter with Jim. You learned something about his humanity and the limits of what is acceptable for childhood pranks when you are traveling with someone who considers you a friend, and trusts you with their life, or at least, freedom.
And all you can do is to make like nothing happened?
(Of course we don't know what happened in the 'humbling' conversation that Huck mentions to the reader in the prior chapter; perhaps that conversation was enough to repair the damage and Jim and Huck have a renewed relationship.)

They begin to worry that they might have missed Cairo, the entrance to the Ohio river. Jim expresses to Huck that if they miss it, he'd be in slave country again and  lose his opportunity for freedom.

Here is another major wresting match between heart and conscience, the conscience that has been developed by the rules and attitudes of society. Now the two Providences are arguing inside of him:

Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.  Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, 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, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place.  It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing.  But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more.  I tried to make out to myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.”  That was so—I couldn’t get around that noway.  That was where it pinched.  Conscience says to me, “What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word?  What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean?  Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how.  That’s what she done.”
I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead.  I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was fidgeting up and down past me.  We neither of us could keep still.  Every time he danced around and says, “Dah’s Cairo!” it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it was Cairo I reckoned I would die of miserableness.

Miss Watson has been difficult and mean at times to Huck, and here he is worrying about her? He is using her as a fill-in for society at large, for the outside influences on his thinking and morality. He us caught up in a fight with conventional morality versus a heart that has clearly been shaken by Jim's humanity.

Huck is now living into the widow's providence, the turning toward praying for and working for the good of others. Whereas before he figured that this would only help the other and not himself, he has clearly benefited from paying attention to Jim's welfare.

But the recognition that he is in a struggle ('I most wished I was dead') shows that his spiritual journey has taken a turn. The influence of the prior chapter's cruel trick and rebuke from Jim has triggered this crisis of conscience.

In my own story, I believe that when I read this book as a child, not understanding much about racism or satire, I was reading the story of a boy's adventure with a negro fool/minstrel. I had no developed sense of temperament, or heart as twain calls it. Instead, my conscience was totally controlled by the conventional morality of my all white community, my white parents and grandparents, and what society was telling me about blacks from the movies and tv.
Thus, Huck is having this crisis, and I'm seeing it for the first time because I'm a man, and I've seen the alternative to the conventions of morality, based on real emotional and spiritual knowledge of blacks.

While Huck is having his moment of conscience, Jim is dreaming of freedom, and imagining what he will do:

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself.  He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them.

Jim models love. Jim models courage.
Jim has practical plans. One guesses that his motivation to run away was at first the prospect of being sold further down the river. But now that he has been free for awhile, and seems close to freedom, he turns to realizing a reunification with his family.
The reader must be rejoicing for Jim here. We learn for the first time that his family has been separated and that Jim's freedom is not just for himself, but for his family.
We want Huck to respond with support and a further call to help him, but Huck is still in full conscience wresting mode:

It most froze me to hear such talk.  He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before.  Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free.  It was according to the old saying, “Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.”  Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking.  Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm.
I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him.  

Who is the real Huck Finn? Is it the Huck who seems to be shocked that Jim would want to reunite with his family? Whose heart is causing him to wrestle with this?
Or is it the racist Huck who recites the old saying. (There is no literary device to counter the plain fact that Huck here has returned to the conventions of morality and racism- give Jim and inch.... etc.)

And then, in a classic example of what Ignatius of Loyola called false consolation, Huck decides to go against his heart and embrace the temptations of society for acceptance:

My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, “Let up on me—it ain’t too late yet—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. 

Ignatius states that the 'evil spirit' in false consolation uses the appearance of lightness and unburdened-ness as a means to continue to draw the person away from God (or in this case, the heart).

Jim thinks he sees Cairo, and Huck uses that as a pretense to begin his betrayal of Jim.
He gets into the canoe, promising Jim he'll verify the presence of Cairo.
But Jim, once again shows his care and concern for his friend Huck:

He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:
“Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck; Huck done it.  Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.”

What a thing to say to Huck in the middle of his crisis! And to think that his false consolation was succeeding by planning the betrayal.
What does Huck do? Continue the narrative that he is responsible for this freedom, and now Jim has even confirmed it out loud! Or absorb, one more time, the loving words that Jim has spoken about his friend Huck? Not only words, but the man put his own old coat in the bottom of the canoe. For Huck's comfort? Sacrificing his own comfort for his friend?

Huck is determined to betray, but as he paddles away, the false consolation fades:

I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me.  I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn’t.  When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:
“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.”
Well, I just felt sick.  But I says, I got to do it—I can’t get out of it.  Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and they stopped and I stopped.  One of them says:
“What’s that yonder?”
“A piece of a raft,” I says.
“Do you belong on it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any men on it?”
“Only one, sir.”
“Well, there’s five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of the bend.  Is your man white or black?”
I didn’t answer up prompt.  I tried to, but the words wouldn’t come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn’t man enough—hadn’t the spunk of a rabbit.  I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says:
“He’s white.”

Once again his conscience has lost the battle with his heart.

Huck then invents the 'small pox' narrative that prevents the men from boarding the raft and discovering Jim.

Huck, having wrestled with his conscience and lost, is now in consolation, but he doesn't know it. He has chosen love and friendship. He admits that he would feel bad if he had succeeded in turning Jim in.  He has chosen the widow's Providence:

WIDOWS PROVIDENCE


They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show—when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat.  Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now?  No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now.  Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?  I was stuck.  I couldn’t answer that.  So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.

Once again Jim expresses his appreciation for Huck's help, and admiration for the way Huck tells his strechers:

“I was a-listenin’ to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne to shove for sho’ if dey come aboard.  Den I was gwyne to swim to de raf’ agin when dey was gone.  But lawsy, how you did fool ‘em, Huck!  Dat wuz de smartes’ dodge!  I tell you, chile, I’spec it save’ ole Jim—ole Jim ain’t going to forgit you for dat, honey.”

And then, although the reader doesn't know it, the novel abruptly takes a fatal turn, as Huck and Jim discover that they have missed Cairo, and in just a few sentences, they also lose the canoe.

When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular Muddy!  So it was all up with Cairo.

and

...when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone!

and then, as they decide to get back on the raft and continue downstream to buy another canoe, a steamboat comes along and plows into the raft. Jim and Huck go overboard, and when the chapter ends Jim is gone and Huck is climbing up on the shore.