Ever since i started this book, i feel like the events that occur as the book goes on are awkwardly strung together. And the way Huck's narrating is written doesn't help my cause :P
Even though Huck has been free from the clutches of his father, he is still technically not free. The same goes for Jim, who is not free until he makes it to the free states, where he plans to make enough money to buy is wife and child out of slavery.
But a major theme that i see reoccurring as I read on in the novel is that Huck is a chronic liar. I think this can count as a form of slavery. He is constantly lying to one person or another. In these chapters specifically, he starts out by lying to Mrs. Judith Loftus about his identity and even his gender (but she sees right through his disguise; luckily for Huck she does not know who he is and she actually gives him advice on how to be a girl). Huck then proceeds to lie to the man looking for his family from the steamboat wreck, and to the robbers, AND to Jim. His constant lying makes him a slave to himself, letting him think that it will help him out in the end, but in reality, it might come back to haunt him one day.
Huck almost sells Jim out (literally) to a couple of slave owners but decides against it, after Jim tells Huck that he is his only friend, and instead decides to continue down to the Ohio river towards the free states with Jim. He feels bad that he did not tell he slave owners about Jim, but he knows inside that he would have felt bad if he did too. I feel that Huck is constantly at war with himself and his own values about his relationship with Jim while knowing that hes technically still a slave. If they make it to freedom then maybe that will change.
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