Huckleberry Finn

Huck Finn and Jim have become good friends over their time on the river. The third joke that Huck plays on Jim happens in the fog when they get separated. Both start whooping to each other to try and find their location, but they keep moving around. Eventually Finn finds the raft, and Jim is asleep. The fog is gone by now, and Huck decides to play a joke on Jim. He wakes Jim up and tells him that he fell asleep and Huck decided to let him sleep for ten minutes. But Jim is sure that they got separated and that there was fog and they couldn't find each other. Huck assures him it was just a very vivid dream, but Jim stands up and says "En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirst on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." This is a big step for Jim, because it is the first time that he stood up for himself. The first joke he thought that he was rode by the witches, the second he almost died, but blames it on superstition and tells Huck not to blame himself. This was the one time Jim actually stood up for himself to Huck. And Huck humbled himself to Jim, even if he is black. Huck, even though born to racists and raised by racists, is getting over that and is starting to see Jim more as a friend then a runaway slave. This is shown more when the slave catchers come. Jim is truly considering turning in Jim because he knows it is wrong to be helping a slave. But when the time comes to tell the slave catchers that Jim is a runaway, he can't do it. Huck did try to tell them that Jim was black, but he choked on his words and eventually gave up and said Jim was white. When the men asked to see him, Huck said sure, but then made up a disease so the men wouldn't want to go near him. Huck was smart about it though, he never said a name of any illness because he wanted the men's help. Huck sees that Jim is now a friend and he keeps by his word to not tell anyone he ran away. When Mark Twain put this aside, I really don't know why he did because I can't get into his mind. But I think it happened because after Jim and Huck become friends and are heading to Cairo it was hard to continue because Jim and Huck are getting closer to freedom, but what do you do next? You either let Jim and Huck get to the free states, or Jim gets captured. I think this took a long time to think about because Jim is a real character now, so do you really want to catch him? Or catch him and make a better story? It would have been a tough decision depending on how attached to the characters Mark Twain was.