Tom Sawyer, the 'good' rapscallion who only plays at the dark life of a wild boy torments Jim before revealing the fact that Jim is free. Tom does not understand the true meaning of freedom, and so he engages in a kind of sick adolescent joke when Jim is being held captive by Tom's relatives the Phelps. Over and over again the novel mocks hypocrisy and ignorance: for example, the young Grangerford girl who died young and sketched beautiful and morbid works of art lived in a world where families would pray and shoot themselves. The Shakespearean actors who pretend to have culture (they call themselves the 'duke' and the 'dauphin') attempt to extort the money from the kindly Wilks only meet their comeuppance because of Huck's revelation of their schemes. People who make pretences of either faith or aristocracy thus rot in the lowest...

In the Widow and Miss Watson's world, it is natural human beings are bought and sold because everyone does this: the socially approved caste clings to their wealth and possessions. Huck, at the end of the novel, leaves for his kind of heaven -- the wide and open territories. Huck rejects civilization again, but not simply because he does not want to wear a stiff shirt and read the Bible. He has seen that civilization enslaves and harms the human spirit, and cannot be trusted.
Twain's hell is not as elaborately structured as Dante's. There are two kinds of people -- those who respect humanity and those who do not. Jim and Huck are two of the 'good people' of Twain's world. Malicious people who cannot see themselves truthfully, and believe they are above natural human law and think that laws, fine clothes, and fine words can mask evil deeds are condemned by the novel.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Full e-text available October 9, 2009 at http://etext.virginia.edu/twain/huckfinn.html