![]() Then, in chapter 31 comes Huck’s most profound and searching mental crisis, where he makes the choice to “go to hell” for failing to betray Jim to the slave-owners. In chapter 16, as they approach the Ohio River, where the opportunity really exists for Jim to escape into the free states, Huck feels he should betray him, but cannot do it at the last moment. ![]() Huck gradually learns, though, that Jim is a human being with his own dignity, affections and loyalties, but twice the conflict between the trained conscience and the promptings of his “sound heart” drive Huck into bewilderment. Even Jim himself believes this, and is shocked at his own behavior in escaping – “I – I run off. ![]() To him, Jim is of a different species, and he too owes a debt of gratitude and loyalty to his owner. Huck’s environment has filled his mind with attitudes and judgments that he is unable to question it has created his “deformed conscience” which sees it as his first duty to obey the rules of his society and hand Jim back to his slave-owner. As Twain famously said in his notebooks, the novel was “a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat”. Huck Finn’s crisis of conscience in chapter 31 is the most dramatic and clear example of one of the central themes of the book. ![]()
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