Huck is put in a major moral dilemma in Mark Twains "Huckleberry Finn" - whether to turn Jim in or not to. Religion tells him that by helping Jim go free, he will go to hell. He would walk around town in shame if found out. Society would disown him. Yet Huck's relationship with Jim, along with his own principles, aids Huck to choose the right decision, one in which he continues assisting Jim on his quest for freedom.
Religion tells Huck that by aiding Jim on his quest for freedom he will burn in hell. Huck does not find this comforting. Huck, in the middle of his scared, frustrated decision, thinks, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire." Huck didn't want to be a bad kid - he didn't want to disgrace god.
The cover of the first edition of Adventures of Hu...
Illustration of Jim and Huckleberry Finn, by EW Ke...
1885 illustration from Mark Twain's Adventures of ...The thought of him in hell made him "shiver". Yet religion, in this totally oppressive time in American society, believed that by helping a slave get free was appalling and totally immoral. Huck, although not realizing it himself, did not agree with religion's ideal on slavery. "And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square" Huck believes that he is a sinner, that he is disgracing his religion because he couldn't "pray a lie". This shows how Huck morally opposes religions belief on oppressing people.
The status-quo of the time in America, especially the south,