thern slave state, nor allow him to wander in an allegedly free northern state such as Illinois where bounty hunters still kept the lives of recently freed blacks in peril. So upon three separate occasions, Twain put the manuscript aside and allowed his mind to ruminate over possible solutions to Jim's plight. Although some contemporary scholars suggest that Twain's creation of Jim was largely racist in nature, it would appear that Jim's ambivalent circumstances took a deep hold on Twain's imagination. Like a friend in trouble, Twain could not easily disengage himself from Jim and his plight. This problem of the novel's ending was further complicated by Twain's steel-clad cynical irony. Twain could not simply tack on a sentimental ending to this pair's dramatic flight from the social ills which threatened to engulf them at every turn, he had to find a way to present a realistic appraisal of how two such carefree but complicated characters might actually respond to life's misfortunes. Twain was not interested in the false promises of fiction based upon a high moralism w
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