Power Roles between Jim and Huck in Mark Twain´s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

With Huck and Jim unknowingly fighting to retain power aboard the raft, their friendship becomes stronger even with society’s various attempts to split the two apart. Throughout the book, Huck and Jim switch power roles during their time on the raft. Life on the raft is portrayed as a democracy, but in reality, it is a dictatorship with the in power controlling and influencing all decisions made on the raft. One noticeable occurrence of Jim possessing the power is after Huck and Jim’s separation in the fog.It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger-but i don't it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it”(81). Huck seeks to play a trick on Jim for fun but Jim is not easily fooled and quickly denounces Huck’s action and taking serious offense by it. Huck sees he has hurt Jim and eventually apologizes for his actions acts sincere in it. Huck had to think about how what he did was wrong”it was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger”, but Huck calling Jim a “nigger” informs the reader that Huck sees apologizing to Jim as a lowering of himself. The fifteen minutes that it takes for huck to offer his apology to jim represents Huck’s transition from perceiving Jim as inferior to believing in their equality. As Huck’s perception of Jim becomes more positive his friendship with Jim grows.
Jim’s newly attained power saves his life when Huck wants to inform the slave-catchers of Jim in order to clear his conscience. Speeding down the massive Mississippi River unaware of their location akin to Cairo, Huck volunteering to take the canoe when he sees light and ask for directions. Unaware to Jim, Huck has already planned to tell any slave-catcher about Jim...

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...out a week”(213). Tom mentions a whole new plan and Huck quickly agrees with it disregarding Jim’s safety at the time. Tom makes up his plan on the go and while Huck questions some parts he eventually complies with Tom when European adventure books are mentioned. Tom’s plan ends up takes weeks about Tom to achieve and is very complicated. For the duration of the plan, Jim is held up in a hut with the constant fear that at any time he would be sold down to New Orleans, the worst place for any slave at the time. Because of Tom’s plan, Jim is forced to shared his small hut with various snakes and rats. Before society’s impact on Huck, he is truly cared and wanting to free Jim, but as society takes root in his life at the Phelps he can no longer think for himself and gives into society’s wishes which causes the suffering of Jim damaging their friendship.