ook when Huck tells Tom that he is going to “steal” Jim back. Huck was surprised when Tom said he was going to help Huck steal Jim because Huck thought that Tom would say, “it’s dirty, low-down business” (203). Huck, knowing that Tom “was respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose,” could not figure out why Tom would help steal a slave (210). At this point a reader would think that Tom was not ignorant, but is then surprised to find that Jim was “as free as any cretur that walks this earth (259).” Tom revealed this information after he was shot, telling Mrs. Phelps and Huck that when Miss Watson had died, she felt extremely bad about wanting to sell Jim, so she set him free in her will. This is when Tom’s ignorance shines through to the reader. When Tom was asked why he tried to set a free slave free, he responded with “I wanted the adventure of it (259).” Tom never would have aided Huck in helping Jim escape because of the proper up-bringing Tom had had at that time. To set a slave free was a considered irrational and unlawful, but Tom went along with it because Jim was already free, so there was no risk of breaking the law, or bringing shame to his family, it only brought adventure.The similarity between the Royal Nonesuch and the Phelps’s friends was their ignorance that blacks served only as a purpose to make whites feel better about themselves. The Royal Nonesuch traveled along with Jim only because they got a free ride out of it. When hard times came for them, they sold Jim for forty dollars. When Huck asked the Duke of Jim’s whereabouts the Duke lied, “he started to tell me the truth, but when he stopped that way, and begun to study and think again,” and lied right to Huck (195). Just as the Royal Nonesuch used Jim to gain money to make themselves feel better, the Phelps’s friends also used Jim to make...
