(np) HF, the payoff of not being completely d*ckish...

[Michael Bailey]

I'm not trying to read Jim as a noble savage, but maybe I'm
underestimating the influence of superstition and his weariness after
a day of (literal) slave labor.

It just seems to me that he's a vigorous big young man of normal
intelligence, and he's already up at midnight to have heard Huck and
Tom in the first place.

If an Irish-American ("no dogs or Irishmen allowed") such as myself
were to go outside after hearing a noise at midnight, and if I were
still worried about possible danger, there's not a snowball's chance
that I'd really fall asleep against a tree.

but if I were a house functionary, and somewhat fond of kids, but not
of a social standing to fraternize with them aboveboard, and I loved
to hear and even more to tell a good story as much as Tom (or Mark
Twain), then I'd pretend to fall asleep and see what they did --

Tom and Huck are locally famous, after all, and Huck's new to that
household.  I can't be overtly friendly because of what I am; I'm not
especially loyal to the house rules so I have no motivation to get the
boys in trouble (especially since they could quite easily make my life
miserable);  I do want them to know I'm there, I'm a person...

It's not a crucial point, I mean he might really have fallen asleep,
and he and all his friends might really believe in witches, after all,
it's not that far-fetched -- what kind of people would enslave a
person and sell him downriver?  wicked witches of a sort

and, I mean, not to push it too far, but the God that the sisters
worship who countenances such activity -- his victims might think of
him as a Devil...

but for my purposes the most important thing here is how Jim is a
storyteller of no mean reputation himself, and - like Tom - makes life
more interesting for himself and others by doing so.  (there's even a
suggestion that he's striving to improve his station in life by
storytelling - "Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got
stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by
witches." )

anyway, Huck's nostalgia de la boue has already led him to "light out"
and put his old rags and sugar hogshead on - is that like those guys
in cartoons wearing a barrel?

to get him back, Tom hunts him up and says he's starting a gang of
robbers that Huck can join if he'll go back and live with the widow
Douglas again.

so, "just when he thinks he's out, they pull him back in"

now Tom has to deliver on that "gang of robbers" promise, and
apparently he's out Tom-catting anyway so when Huck meets up with him
outside, after suffering through spelling lessons and threats of
hellfire and an unpalatable dinner -

"When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you
had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little
over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with
them,—that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself.  In a
barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the
juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better."

(is it going too far to suggest that the mingling of the food improves
it, as the mingling of a variety of people improves life?)

anyway...how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable he finds life in the
class to which he has been allotted!

And if he has such feelings, how much more so would Jim feel?

if Jim seizes upon the nickel with whatever degree of realism and
begins to see himself as special, chosen, worthy of consideration -
and to put this new self-esteem into practice so that "he's most
ruined for a servant" -- you just know the management is going to
notice that and take measures

so that his prospect of being sold is - almost certainly - linked to
Tom and Huck's midnight foray and the enchanted nickel (although what
he made of it indicates that there was something in him ready for that
-- Twain holding Jim out as a man and a brother, a fellow of the craft
of storytelling...and seeing how that turned out for him is really a
major well-oiled cruxly hinge of the plot)

but like I was sayin' -- Huck finds the settled life so disappointing
that Tom has to lure him back with the promise of membership in a gang
of robbers!

now, it would be downright moralistic to say that a slave-based
society IS a gang of robbers, but, well, hrmmph, let's leave that to
the abolitionists...

Tom's love of romantic stories like Don Quixote and Ali Baba and gangs
of robbers and tall tales is just the ticket.  What he has that Huck
and Jim will not is a strong safety net, so that to some extent he
gets the thrill without the real-world misery.  although he did get
into some real mess in that cave, didn't he?

ah, frap, I totally lost my thread.   think I have a point here...