Huckleberry Finn Quote Analysis

People greatly value honor, and they will disregard everyone else and put themselves in danger in order to achieve it. For example, Tom wants it to be harder to get Jim out of his confinements, ignoring the fact that he is a human being and it is essential to his health and well being that he not remain imprisoned. When he encounters Jim’s situation, he says, “‘Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.”’ Tom is more concerned with making getting Jim out into a challenge than actually getting him out quickly and safely, because Tom feels that, “‘there’s more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers.’” He is willing to make his life more dangerous just to attain honor. He also puts attaining honor before Jim’s well-being, demonstrating how he values an honorable reputation above the lives of others.

Tom wants to “invent the difficulties” since he believes that “there’s more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers”. In order to achieve this honor, Tom makes freeing Jim a hard job. Tom says that he and Huck will need to perform tasks such as “saw[ing] the leg of Jim’s bed off, so as to get the chain loose”. However, Huck points out Tom said earlier that “a body could lift up the bed-stead and slip the chain off”, showing that Tom created this task for the sole purpose of making their job harder. This is dangerous for the two of them and for Jim, since it is much more dangerous to take a saw and saw off the leg of the bed than to simply slip the chain