1. "I can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's neck and crying; and I reckon I couldn't a stood it all but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two." (page 196)
- Although Huck feels horrible seeing slave family being pulled apart, he does not feel sorry for the slaves. Indeed, he feels bad only because Mary Jane, as well as her sisters, is upset about it: "I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it" (196). Living in the Old South, it is hard for someone to stay away and not to be stained by the belief of slavery, even Huck, whom should be considered as an outsider of the society. Racism and slavery is a great challenge for Huck to overcome. So when Jim said he was going to get his two children back, Huck was frozen: "He would steal his children - children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm" (101). Although Huck has a great companionship with Jim and learned that black people have their own dignity and thoughts, he is still tangling between his conscience of humanity and the widely-accepted tolerance of brutal slavery.
- This should be seen as a milestone of Huck Finn's moral development. For the first time, Huck chose to solve a problem by telling the truth, instead of making a big lie to cover it up. Huck has been lying throughout his life - he thinks that lies are the only way to make things right and to let him survive. However, as the seed of conscience sprouts from his heart, he is now willing to, at least, try to be honest: "I'm agoing to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to" (200). We can see that Huck gradually realized the ugliness of greed and pretense in the duke and the king's hearts. Therefore, he is now trying to be different from those kind of hypocrites and liers - he is, fortunately, learning to be a man who values righteousness and truthfulness.
1. Shroud - [n.] burial garment in which a corpse is wrapped
Ex. "The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man’s face down there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on." (192)
2. Melodeum - [n.]
1> a small reed organ
2> a kind of accordion
Ex. "They had borrowed a melodeum." (194)
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