Depicted facts of life along the Mississippi.
The story points out the contrast between wealthy aristocrats owning hundreds of slaves (e.g., the Grangefords) and poorer Southerners (e.g., the inhabitants of Bricksville). People living along Mississippi relied on farming, slaves maintaining vast plantations ensured planters’ income, they were therefore perceived as a valuable part of their property.
It is also of note that people back then were rather superstitious, especially the slaves, which we can see through Jim when he believes the rattlesnake skin will bring him and Huck bad luck because Huck had touched it with his bare hands. Superstitions like these help further indoctrinate the slaves into the master-slave narrative of the times along with religion.
Apart from slavery and racism, the author covers various local customs and beliefs (e.g., floating loaves of bread filled with mercury) and opposes Christianity practiced by higher classes to superstitions preferred by lower classes (Huck and Jim). He also shows that a good understanding of the protestant faith requires decent education.
We get some insight into the lives of rafters on Mississippi. New Orleans is shown as the heart of the south. The temperance movement (quite influential in the south) comes up.
Life along Mississippi is depicted as quite harsh: people are used to finding dead bodies in the river and seeing runaway apprentices; they fear small-pox; they feud; they drink.
The effects of the narrative that uses the voice of the teenage narrator, in his observations, in the relation of various incidents and happenings
The first-person narration allows Huck to share not only his interactions with the people he meets along the river but also his inner thoughts, which allow us to observe how he grows as a character. Eventually, he refuses the norms imposed by the southern pro-slavery society, refuses to turn Jim in and acts on his own convictions. Slang and dialect incorporated into the narration contribute to the authenticity of the story.
The Main Characters
As the novel is written from Huck’s point of view, we get much more insight into his mind, and he is also the much more proactive hero, Jim takes more of a passive role. Where Huck is driven more by his want for adventure and the hope of running away from his father, Jim’s goal is a little more direct - he hopes to become a free man and provide for his family.
Huck is curious, adventurous, and highly non-conformist. Jim, on the other hand, is a kind-hearted and patient man, which makes him and Huck work very well together as characters.
On Chapter 16
This chapter highlights well Huckleberry’s initial view on the rights of slaves. He feels guilty for luring away Miss Watson’s slave and when Jim talks about how he would steal his own children if he had to, Huckleberry thinks of those children as the property of their master, not as the children of their father. As Huckleberry says as the narrator: “Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying 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.”