36 to the End

In the last few chapters I see all entanglements of enslavement between Aunt Sally and Huck, Aunt Sally and Silas, and most importantly, Tom, Huck, and Jim. Aunt Sally always questions Huck and Tom and seems to always be in their business during the worst times. When the snakes are let loose in the house and rats are discovered, Aunt Sally freaks out and blames Silas who cannot deny anything. When a spoon was missing she blamed him for taking it when he was really innocent. However, the most important case of enslavement is with Tom and Huck. There are only a few instances when Huck seems to tries to act on his own feelings instead of following Tom's ridiculous plans. On pages 275 and 276 Huck says, "What I want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon...I'm agoing to dig that nigger or that watermelon...and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther" showing him speaking his mind which I think is a sort of freedom he had not known before. Of course this is all big talk since a teenager is usually all talk and no action. It's still good to see Huck speaking out because it's a way of expressing your feelings which is helpful to any teenager. Naturally, Tom refutes this claim and goes back to enslaving Huck and Jim. When Huck says getting stuff through Silas and Aunt Sally to give to Jim was ridiculous, Tom ignored him.  There is also another character I thought was being enslaved by Tom. His name is Nat and he is another slave. The fact that Jim and Nat believe Tom's lies just because he's white is enslavement because Tom knows the slaves have no education and uses that knowledge to entertain himself. So because the slaves follow Tom's ridiculous plan, they enslave themselves and allow people to manipulate them. As slaves they really don't know any better but there are times when Jim thinks Tom is being impossible. So they can speak out but give up in the end. At one point Jim says he's afraid of spiders and snakes and constantly rejects Tom's ideas as well as watering plants with his own tears. But Tom is the puppet master and refuses to acknowledge Tom and Jim's claims. The ending wasn't bad though. I think I've come to like the book...only a little bit.