Why Is Jim Important In Huck Finn

Jim is one of the most important characters to the novel, Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn. While Mark Twain was writing the story, he used Jim as a way to show the slavery and racism problems that were going on during the time. Jim was a runaway household slave whose owner was Miss Watson. Although he was a slave, he was one of the most intelligent and adult-like person the the novel. While it was just Jim and Huck, Jim was the only adult. During the book, Jim’s main goal was to get up north onto the Ohio River so he could gain his freedom from slavery. Then, once he got out of slavery, he planned to save up money and go buy his wife and kids out of slavery as well. However, once they missed the Ohio River it all went downhill for Jim. This is where Mark uses him to show how slavery was. “Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him if he’d seen a strange nigger, dressed so and so, and he says: …show more content…
Mark used this time to show how slaves were treated then, especially runaway slaves. When Jim gets caught and Huck goes looking for him, he had to lie so he did not get pulled into helping Jim runaway. Huck also had to act like he was scared of Jim and he pretended that Jim had threatened to hurt him if he told anyone. Although Jim is a slave, he is still used as a decision maker and an adult figure. I thought that was interesting because most of the other things I have read, slaves were saw as uneducated and had little power and say in anything. Another thing I thought was interesting was the respect that Jim received, especially from Huck. “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,” (page 81). Even though Huck grew up being taught slaves did not deserve respect, he still showed Jim