Lonesome EJ: And Twain plays the same turn-the-tables game with the use of the word nigger by Huck and others. As was said above, there was no other way of referring to black people in Huck's culture. But Nigger Jim becomes Huck's true friend, and the only adult he can understand and admire.

The best part of the whole book is where Huck says that Aunt Polly never did anything bad to him ever, "and here I am stealing her nigger." The whole upside-downness of what is right and wrong in that society (and in ours) is right there in just a few words.