Huck/Jim Encounter 9 - Chapter 15

At the beginning of the chapter, Huck and Jim are on the river. Huck is in the canoe, looking for spot on a tow-head to tie the raft up for the night, but the raft tears loose and Huck and Jim get separated in the fog.

Huck starts the first paragraph reviewing the plans -  to get to Cairo, where the Ohio river meets the Mississippi, sell the raft and get on a steamboat up the Ohio. Out of trouble for both; freedom for Jim.

Huck calls Jim a fool:

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. 

Huck finally catches up to Jim (miles of river have been covered). He is asleep. The raft is smashed up in places, and there are leaves and branches and dirt.

 So she’d had a rough time.

And here begins one of the pivot points in the novel. Jim has been a companion. A father figure. A protector. A teacher. But he has been a runaway slave and still an inferior.

Jim expresses how relieved he is that Huck is alright.

“Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck?  En you ain’ dead—you ain’ drownded—you’s back agin?  It’s too good for true, honey, it’s too good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o’ you.  No, you ain’ dead! you’s back agin, ‘live en soun’, jis de same ole Huck—de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!”

"It's too good to be true. .... thanks to goodness."

Jim is glad to see Huck. He obviously thought he had lost him. Huck had previously thought he had lost Jim:

I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him.  I was good and tired, so I laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn’t bother no more.  I didn’t want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn’t help it; so I thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.

He reckons it's all up with Jim. The contrast of emotions is stark. Jim is beside himself with joy and relief. Huck couldn't 'bother no more'.

Huck sees that Jim is ripe for a trick, and so convinces Jim that he has been dreaming. Instead of responding with similar warmth, he must have also been glad to see Jim, he responds with what turns out to be another cruel 'Tom Sawyer-like' trick.

Jim's dream interpretation is a pretty accurate foretelling of the rest of the book:

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable.  Then he said he must start in and “‘terpret” it, because it was sent for a warning.  He said the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him.  The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn’t try hard to make out to understand them they’d just take us into bad luck, ‘stead of keeping us out of it.  The lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn’t talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn’t have no more trouble.

The premonition that there were quarrelsome people ahead and all kinds of mean folks is spot on. The big clear river in the free States is off the mark, unless you count that as Jim's freedom granted by Miss Watson.

Fair enough. Jim did a good job at interpreting the dream.

But then Huck does his reveal:

“Oh, well, that’s all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I says; “but what does these things stand for?”
It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar.  You could see them first-rate now.

You can hear Huck laughing at Jim on the inside. What does he expect of Jim? Will Jim see the joke and laugh at his cleverness? Has he mistaken Jim for Tom Sawyer?
And how about the reader?
Is the reader, in anticipation of the joke's climax, about to have a laugh? Or does the reader feel the sting of the cruel practical joke?

“What do dey stan’ for?  I’se gwyne to tell you.  When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de raf’.  En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie.  Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.”
Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that.

It is the subtle satire that is at work, inviting the reader to catch themselves as they were prepared to have a good laugh at the expense of Jim, powered by the racism of seeing the minstrel humiliated for a laugh, when Jim instead responds with his burst of humanity.

A friend doesn't make another friend feel ashamed. Jim names Huck a friend.
Jim pours out his heart - I didn't care no more what become of me.....
Jim is angry, and calls Huck the equivalent of 'nigger' - trash.
Jim expresses his dignity.
Jim also controls the scene for the first time when he walks away from Huck, the white boy, and says nothing more.

At this point, Huck could have become the boy who, having been caught in his cruelty, just makes excuses. "Hey Jim, I was just kidding." or "C'mon Jim, where's your sense of humor?"

But Huck expresses, on behalf of himself and the reader, the remorse that comes when the struggle between the heart and the conscience ends up with a broken heart:

But that was enough.  It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.

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.

And so we are at a point in Huck's spiritual development when he realizes that he has been mean to another human, someone who views him as a friend, who would even sacrifice himself for Huck. This is the realization of a man, not a boy who has been caught red-handed in a trick. 

He repents.

And the reader must ask, 'why didn't you know that he would feel that way?' Because you've been around Tom Sawyer too much? Because you view Jim is without depth of feelings? Because you misunderstood 'love' for buddy-ship?

We aren't told the content of the conversation where Huck 'humbled' himself; but the reader gets to imagine because they have probably thought through what they might say after they were tempted to have a laugh at Jim's expense.

It recalls the snake incident where Huck plays a trick on Jim that results in the snake bite. But Huck was able to cover that up. Nevertheless, it was Huck's first lesson- Jim feels pain.

Hearn points out that Huck feels guilt for his treatment of a slave probably for the first time in his life. (Hearn)

Toni Morrison suggests that Huck is unable to articulate his feelings for Jim and his remorse for this cruelty directly to Jim; only to the reader.

We see Jim as the adult, and Huck as the child.