【正文】 ly dying, Huck has to run back to call a doctor. At the crucial moment, instead of running away, Jim chooses to risk his freedom and look after Tom. He says to Huck:” No, sah – I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place’ dout a doctor, not if it’s forty year” (2003, p329)! At last, Jim is caught by the old white doctor. In order to protect Huck and not to put Huck to any trouble, Jim even pretends not to recognize Huck at all. All of the above prove that Jim is kind and considerate towards others, just as Huck’s conclusion that “I knowed he was white inside” (2003, p329).By characterizing Huck and Jim in such way, Mark Twain presents the theme of ordinary people, “dirty, nearilliterate, indifferent to religion” with their wisdom in its center. SlaveryMark Twain, as one of the most important initiators and founders of American realism literature, achieved widely spread influences, especially for his masterpiece Huck Finn, which was used as the best weapon to fight against racial prejudice and discrimination. To quote William Howells’ saying, “No man more perfectly sensed and entirely abhorred slavery. Mark Twain held himself responsible for the wrong which the white race had done the black race in slavery”. Mark Twain never waved in his profound opposition to all forms of the mask of racism and discrimination (Liao Fucai, 2000). The bad treatment of slaves The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is based on the American society of 1850s, during which time, slavery was a law. It was legal to keep the black people as slaves. Huck grew up in the south where slavery was dominant and slave owners thought that slaves were their own possessions (Zhang Xihua, 1996).Slavery is extensive and slaves are heavily oppressed. Jim, a slave of Miss Watson, as a portrait of thousands of slaves, works hard all the time for his owner. But Watson wants to sell him to Orleans for eight hundred dollars. For his family and his own personal liberty, Jim has to run away. Not only Jim but also a great number of other slaves have to endure such an ill treatment. During Huck and Jim’s voyage down the Mississippi, they get to know many Negroes are killed or arrested now and then, so they have to hide and sleep in the daytime and walk at night. At a port, in order to catch five runaway niggers the entire town went out with loaded arms, they searched everywhere and even stoped the passing ships to check whether there are niggers. To earn money, they try every method to catch niggers, just as Parker tells Huck, “If you see any runaway niggers, you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it” (2003, p110). The above demonstrates that not only slave owners can sell slaves freely, but also ordinary whites. The slavery is so prevailing that the buying or selling slaves is very mon. White adults’ attitude to slavesIn Chapter 32, we can see the following conversation between Huck and Aunt Sally.“It warn’t the grounding – that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinderhead.” “Good gracious! Anybody hurt?” “No’m. killed a nigger.” “Well, it’s lucky。 ‘tain’t right and ‘tain’t fair for you to stay that all the time, and never give nobody a chance。 and after that, Jim is bitten by the dead snake’s mate. On the other hand, just being a little, innocent boy, Huck was not affected profoundly. After playing a trick again on Jim, Huck feels so regretful that he makes a decision not to play any more tricks on Jim. This is the beginning of Huck’s change.Furthermore, getting to know Jim, Huck believes that Jim cares just as much for his family as white folks do for their own, and considers him a very good and smart nigger. But Huck’s understanding is not profound and short of strong support. After hiding the money in the coffin, which is cheated by the king and the duke, Huck witnesses the miserable sufferings of the niggers in the Wilks’ house. “A couple of niggertraders e along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for therrday drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans” (2003, p220). The painful sight of separation not only shows an endurably terrible picture, a cutting denunciation of slavery but also tells Huck that the slavery in the society is crude and inhumanity. In this way, Huck understands the racial discrimination in American society and he changes his own prejudice to slaves gradually.In Chapter 31, Huck’s contradictory thoughts e to a climax, because he faces a big moral problem between his “sound heart” and the “deformed conscience”. The laws of the society say he must return Jim to his “owner”. Therefore, Huck writes a letter to Miss Watson and wants to tell her the truth. However, Huck gradually realizes that Jim is a person instead of an object and he finds that Jim is a kindhearted man, so he hesitates to send the letter which means to betray Jim. “It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was atrembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’ – and tore it up” (2003, p257).Realizing a slave is a man, not an “object”, Huck thinks deeply about morality and after a struggle with his conscience he decides to break the law in the slavery society and chooses to go to hell and rescue Jim. It is Huck’s triumph over conscience that makes him decide to steal Jim out of slavery again. The action that Huck decides to rescue Jim changes him from a boy who tries at first to be loyal to the morality of the slave – holding system into one who safeguards the rights of the black people. Jim’s attitude to slaves Although he himself is a black, Jim even looks down upon blacks. In Chapter 14, when Huck asks Jim how Jim will deal with people who can’t municate with him in language, Jim answers: “I wo