e “Huck’s two-page struggle over whether to betray Jim is a masterpiece of metaphysically comic inversion, a sardonic, hilarious examination of conscience” (Galileo: Morrow). Now this predicament of monstrous proportions is considered “a metaphor for all social bondage and injustice” (Grant 1013), since Twain wrote this after the Civil War. Huck’s dilemma is this, should he do what his society has bred into him or do as his soul implores him? Those who have read the book know that “Twain affirms for us the true humanity is of men rather than institutions, and that we can all be aristocrats in the kingdom of the heart” (Grant 1014). Huck, after many fluctuations in conscience, decides he will “go to hell” (Twain 221) and help Jim become a free man. This declaration of goodwill affirms that Huck places more value on Jim’s life than the beliefs of the rest his culture. Huck not only displays this regard for Jim’s life, also the life of people of every race and moral standings standing he knows. Huck seems to dislike any violence or harmful actions. An example of this is When [Huck] imprisons the intending murderers on the wrecked steamboat, his first thought is of how to get someone to rescue them, for he considers ‘how dreadful it was, even foot murderers, to be in such a fix….[and] when [Huck] hears that [the Duke and the King] are in danger from a mob, his natural impulse is to warn them. (Trilling 260-261)Later in the book, everything of the Wilk’s is to be sold and the slaves are to be split up which “made [Huck] feel pretty bad” (Twain 185), even though he knows that “the sale won’t be valid, and it’ll all go back to the estate” (Twain 185). Furthermore when Colonel Sherburn shoots Boggs in cold blood and the crowd gathers savagely around the colonel’s place Huck asserts that “it was awf...
