Towards the end of the 16th chapter two armed men in a skiff approach Huck who’s in the canoe and Jim who’s hidden in the raft next to the canoe. The men say that they are out hunting for 5 slaves who ran away the night prior. The men say they’d like to see the man hidden in the raft, but Huck says that’s not the best idea. He says that the man in the raft is his father who has gotten sick and even goes on to say that when he asks people for help they run away when they realize he’s sick. Eventually the two men in the skiff assume that Huck’s imaginary sick father has small pox and decide to leave and not take the chance of catching the very contagious disease. The two men even leave Huck 40 dollars on a board so he can seek some help for his sick father.
Before and after the conversation with the two men Huck makes it obvious that he doesn’t feel right about lying to these people and even considers turning Jim in right then and there. His inner turmoil stems from the fact that what he knows deep down is wrong, and what society tells him is wrong are completely different things. The right thing in his society would have been to turn in Jim and never help him run away at all. For Huck he struggles even to say that the person in the raft is white. “I didn’t answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn’t come… so I just give up trying, and up and says – ‘He’s white.’” (102) After the two men leave, he even goes on to say about how he feels bad about doing wrong. “I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right”. (103) Huck surrenders to the fact that what he’s doing is wrong because that is the only thing he knows how to do.
Huck says to himself as he is returning to the raft, “So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.” Every time he’s helping Jim, a part of him feels disgusted because he knows he’s doing wrong. But he knows even if he does the right thing (turning Jim in), it would make him feel exactly the same as doing wrong. At this point of the novel, Huck reveals a part of himself that can’t help but help Jim because that’s who he is although he hates himself for it.
Through this scene we see the development of Huck’s identity separate from the widow’s and pap’s. Unbeknownst to him, his morals are changing the idea of jim returning into slavery is unsettling. The idea of right and wrong seems to confuse him because jim is no longer just a slave to him, he is now a companion/brother figure in some sort. Huck knows the punishment that runaways receive and he can’t allow jim to go through it.
