Huck reaches the breaking point of his emotions when Jim talks about hiring Abolitionists to steal away his wife & children from their owners.
Chapter 16
Find a quotation in this chapter that depicts Huck's conflicting feelings.
Huck's feelings of loyalty and friendship to Jim are in direct conflict with what he thinks is the legal and moral thing to do.......... and that would be to turn Jim in to the authorities.
“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.” (Pg. 97)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
