Chapter 16-18

Chapters 16 through 18 create a new picture in the readers mind of Huckleberry’s developing psyche. Throughout these pages the ideas of his opinions and morals seem to start becoming more important in Huckleberry Finn’s life. An example of this would be when Huck and Jim are floating down the river to find the town Cairo, Huck has some time to ponder upon the decisions he had made pertaining to his past. One of which being that he cannot decide if it was wrong or right of him to allow Miss Watson’s and the widow’s slave to Jim run with away with him. This was bothering Huck because he was finally starting to identify all the wonderful things those two women did for him, and he did not want to do them wrong by allowing the slave they purchased with their own money, Jim to flee. This is something that would have not bothered Huck in the previous chapters because he never thought things through completely. Now since he was completely own his own, he was beginning to realize that his decisions affected him in the future either positively or negatively depending upon what he chose. Throughout the chapters you being to see Huck stopping before making an important decision or answering a question to correctly chose the one that would affected him positively in the future. This mite be the maturity that Huckleberry Finn needs to survive on his own.