Michael O'Connor, I must say that I balk at the notion that Huck's "loyalty" to a friend is unparalleled in all of literature. What we witness at the end of the novel is not a Huch loyal to Jim, but one *still* so intimidated by Tom Sawyer--and the ethos of boyish loyalty not so much to *persons* but to a *code of behavior* embodied so starkly in Tom--that he allows Tom nearly to get Jim killed. When Jim *does* ago (go) free, it is no thanks to Huck. I would want to amend your words to say that Twain portrays an "individual who has been 'educated' (read corrupted) into acceptance of a powerful social institution (here slavery . . .) [*not] being able to overcome and resist that 'education' through personal experience and heart rendering (sic) loyalty to a friend." Now, if any individual *is* gifted and heroic enough to *ought* to have been able to overcome that education, it is Huck, but this is precisely where I think the real nature of Twain's brilliance rests: He deconstructs the American cult of the individual able to rise above such a pernicious 'education' by showing a gifted individual's ultimate failure to do this, and *thus* urges us to recognize the profoundly social and environmental, rather than individual, solutions which such problems require. The American cult of individual self-sufficiency is deconstructed in similarly brilliant fashion in E. L. Doctorow's *Billy Bathgate* (I do *not* mean the movie!). Thanks for hearing me out. Michael McDonald