Early on in Huckleberry Finn, Jim tells Huck “You wants to keep ‘way fum de water as much as you kin, en don’t run no resk, ‘kase it’s down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to git hung.” The words have a wondrously ominous ring, but what precisely did Twain intend them to mean, and what function do they have in the novel as a whole? Presuming that Jim, when he said “it’s down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to git hung”, meant “it is highly likely that you will be hanged unless you consistently pursue a prudent course of action” rather than “your fate is cast in stone; you will be hanged,” one has to wonder why avoiding water would reduce Huck’s chances of being hung. Furthermore, when Huck and Jim are together on the raft, why doesn’t Jim suggest to Huck that he consider another mode of transportation? When you show the audience a gun in the first act, it’s supposed to go off in the fifth, but Twain seems to have let his powder get wet on this one.
Want Huck on line? Try here.
