Scott Holmes has twice now addressed the problem of "stealing" Jim in _Huckleberry Finn_, which I agree is a fairly thorny problem in the novel. I can think of several approaches to it. The first, and least appealing, is that Twain is deliberately skewering the moral implications of his novel--the consequence of his warning to the reader not to try to find a moral in the book. This early warning is usually taken as a piece of irony, but I think Twain is always on guard lest he make Huck seem too good, too moral. Moreover, I doubt if Twain had any intention of turning his novel into an anti-slavery tract--a tactic that would have been outdated in the mid- 1880's, even if he had desired to do so. Rather it is the story, it seems to me, about a boy's discovery of the limitations of his world, of which the association with Jim is a crucial part--but still only a part. The second has to do with Twain's view of the psychology of boys. Twain often mentioned the "good boy" and the "bad boy" as distinct types in his writings. As all readers know, he much preferred the latter because he saw in him energy, enterprise, and a capacity for the heroic in later life. He disliked the good boy precisely because he saw in him weakness, hypocrisy, and a willingness to accept and even represent the status quo-- scarcely the mark of the active, inventive and imaginative individuals Twain admired. But there is a caveat. Twain also sees the possibilities of the "bad boy" as embryonic only and subject to many influences. As a determinist, he believes that to a great extent fate or circumstance decide the direction in life an individual will take. Although he doesn't seem to have worked through this philosophy in the detail it receives in the later "What is Man?", his instinctive feeling about the matter is well communicated in the remark about Tom Sawyer that the boy will grow up to be president if they don't hang him first. Huck likewise is in a state of moral formation and heavily subject to circumstance. He has, essentially, a good heart, and we see him act on it often. He does not, however, always do what we would like. He sometimes appears to us as a person of moral responsibility, as when he refuses to turn Jim over to the slave-catchers though believing that this means he will burn in hell. But such an act does not constitute a principle--not yet. Huck will still act in an immature way, simply because he is still immature. It seems to me that the critics who fault Huck for his compliance with Tom's escape plan expect him to be, presto, fully cognizant of all his acts because he has acted noble previously. This is not, however, the way human beings behave, even those older and more aware than Huck. The appearance of Tom Sawyer, an acquaintance from before Huck's experiences on the river (and an admired acquaintance at that) is, for Huck, a step back into the world of St. Petersburg, a world familiar to him. And after his recent escapades, a familiar face must certainly seem reassuring. Furthermore, Tom is perhaps the quintessential bad boy in Twain; and I think we should consider Tom's actions at the farm in light of that fact. In _Tom Sawyer_, Twain clearly intends for us to admire Tom's ingenuity and leadership qualities, even when--as in the famous dosing the cat and whitewashing the fence episodes--the moral implications are not very admirable. As with Huck, Twain shows Tom again and again meeting situations in which he must make decisions about how he will act and according to what dictates. Some of Tom's actions are admirable, others are not. Twain leaves the decision about which are which to the reader's own moral sense. But, again, as in Huck's case, he also trusts the reader to realize that the bad boy has not yet fully developed such a sense, that he is--to an extent--much like the narrator of "The Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut" who has killed his conscience and feels free to act on his desires. Killing one's conscience is a pipe-dream (at least for a man of Twain's sensitive conscience) and there lies behind it, I believe, the desire to recover one's innocense, the lost Eden in which all that one does is right. Tom and Huck are both innocents still and have as yet only a dim idea of the burden conscience imposes. The state of innocense, consequently, does not preclude cruelty (MT is not William Blake). Third, I think that Twain must have had aesthetic as well as moral considerations in mind and that the stealing of Jim episode is designed for the purposes of artistic form and consistency. Throughout the book, I hope the readers of this note will agree, enclosed structures represent some form of imprisonment, and Twain makes it clear that liberation from these prisons--as a mental process and a physical action--is always difficult. One of the ways he establishes this idea is through parallelism, one of his favorite novelistic devices. Parallelism in this book allows Twain to create certain important affinities between Jim and Huck. For instance, in his flight from Pap, Huck seems to have been freed by the river; and it is perfectly right, artistically, that Jim should find Pap dead in a destroyed house (symbol of confinement) floating downstream. It is also right that Jim keeps this fact a secret from Huck--whatever his motives for doing so--for it continues the process of internal liberation that will eventually lead Huck to "light out for the territories" rather than endure the stifling boredom he had experienced under the tutelage of widow Douglas and Miss Watson (an experience, once again, expressed in terms of household confinement). This secret is very close to another one that Twain is also keeping from the reader, the fact that Miss Watson freed Jim shortly after his departure. We shouldn't, however, conclude that the whole voyage down the river has been a huge folly. Jim's escape to freedom parallels Huck's in that it is a preparation for the dangers of freedom (by no means a blessing without negative consequences) and the building of confidence in others to help overcome those dangers. Finally, if we juxtapose Jim's captivity on the farm with Huck's captivity in Pap's shed, which I think we are meant to do, we see that they are not so far apart. First, both Huck and Jim are confined becuase they are seen as valuable properties. Second, Huck must put up with the crazy shenanigans of his father--the old man beats Huck and suffers dreadfully from the d.t.'s--just as Jim must put up with Tom Sawyer's crazy escape plans. Third, both Huck and Jim play characteristic roles while in confinement; they appear passive. As the folks from the 60's would say, they "go with the flow" like the river itself. Indeed, it seems to me that if there is any lesson to be drawn from the book, it is that freedom is not a one-time thing and that not only is attaining it difficult but keeping it is even more so-- for freedman and slave. Life, Twain seems to be telling us, is a series of captures, confinements and escapes, and one is free only to the extent that he (or she) manages to elude capture. Fourth, as I said in my original note, I think it is a very definite possibility that the "stealing" of Jim is an instance of Twain's further savaging of the riverside communities along the Mississippi and, by extention of the South, especially in its attitude toward slavery. As Twain shows in the Colonel Sherburn episode, human beings in the aggregate are not very appealing and can be easily cowed by the appearance of a strong individual. In an area where slavery is an institution, this perception must be doubly strong in the minds of the inhabitants. Slavery demands not only the forced acquiescence of blacks but the tacit acquiescence of whites, whether they own slaves or not. The notion of the dominance of the few and the submission of the many pervades eveHuck finds h imself in a social sector of the society. Thus, whe Huck finds himself in a social situation in whcih this notion is the norm and in which he feels himself obligated, he has little power of resistance. The notion is given sanction by people who are feeding him, who seem to care for and value him. It is very different from his situtation on the river, where he has only his own better feelings to rely on and where he knows that the men looking for Jim's are his enemies as well as Jim's. This power of society to blunt our better feelings, to turn even good individuals into sheep, is a major theme in Twain; and it is nowhere better illustrated than in this novel, in which all social relationships are expressed in terms of power, of dominance and submission eluded only by wiliness and plans for eventual flight. This has been a long note, but I thought that Mr. Holmes--if he has not taken off for the summer--might find it interesting, that others might respond with their own views about the meaning of that famous (or should I say, infamous) scene if I spelled out some of my own at length. Cheers, Bob Champ