The enslaved man who accompanies Huckleberry Finn is Jim.
Jim is one of the two central figures in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He is enslaved by Miss Watson and runs away after overhearing that she may sell him. Huck, escaping his abusive father, encounters Jim on Jackson’s Island, and the two begin their journey down the Mississippi River on a raft.
Jim’s goal is to reach Cairo, Illinois, a gateway toward freedom, and eventually secure freedom for his family. Although the novel is narrated by Huck, Jim’s intelligence, tenderness, courage, and moral judgment increasingly challenge the assumptions Huck has inherited from the slaveholding society around him. Huck’s decision to help Jim, despite believing he is breaking the law, becomes the novel’s central moral conflict.
Readers sometimes confuse Jim with Tom Sawyer, who becomes involved near the ending, or with Pap Finn, Huck’s violent father. Jim is not merely a sidekick: he is a major character whose flight exposes the cruelty of slavery. Twain published the novel in 1884, and its treatment of race, dialect, and slavery remains widely debated.