Society comes with a set of rules and
responsibilities expected to be followed by its citizens/members. The time
period in which Huck’s story takes place was a time where laws were not as “strict”
and where disciplining your child was actually considered punishing them, and
not abuse. However, even back in Huck’s day there were responsibilities and
expectations people had for one and other. Huck’s father is a drunken, abusive
man who has completely failed his society, in general he just is not
responsible, and more specifically he cannot even assume the role of actually being
a father. Due to this, Huck runs away to live a life on the Mississippi. While doing
so he meet a run-away slave named Jim, a character Huck will soon become very
close with, and who will actually take on a father-like role for Huck. Anyway,
the point is that while running away together, Huck will have random moments in
which he doubts his responsibility to society. This a time period in which
slavery is still a way of life and after all Jim is a run-away slave, so Huck feels
like he owes it his society to turn Jim in. For example, in chapter sixteen
there is a part where men want to board Huck’s raft to search for escaped slaves,
after immediately denying it to the men he thinks to himself, “…I got aboard
the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong…”(Twain
113) Huck feels bad for lying to protect Jim, but then realizes he would feel
bad for turning in his friend just because the law says so. At this point in
the novel Huck is still learning right from wrong and faces this internal
struggle.
