In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Huck continuously fights a battle between his heart and his conscience over the events that he encounters. Huck's feelings and decisions are pulled by his conscience by what society thinks is right and by his heart which tells him what is right or wrong. Throughout the novel, Huck experiences problems with deciding his actions, however, in the end, his heart prevails.
Throughout the book, Huck must make decisions between his heart and his conscience concerning his friendship with Jim. One event is when Jim is talking to Huck about helping him escape from Ms. Watson and Huck mentions that "people would call [him] a low down Abolitionist and despise [him] but that don't make no difference [he] ain't agoing back there anyways" (52-53). Huck reveals his struggle between his heart and conscience here. His conscience is telling him that he would be hated if people knew that he was the one who helped Jim escape from Ms. Watson. Also, by doing this, it would be unlawful and it wouldn't be the right thing to do. On the other hand, his heart is telling him that he would be doing the right thing and that he makes the excuse that he's not coming back to that place in the first place. Huck struggles with this decision but his heart wins this battle when he decides to help Jim.
During their journey down the river, Huck placed a dead snakeskin next to Jim as a prank but "the snake's mate as there, and bit him" (pg 64). When this happens, it seems to have come to Huck that Jim was still a lower ranking person than he was so he thought that that this prank wouldn't mean anything and nothing serious would have happened. Unfortunately, the snake's mate came back and bit Jim. Huck feels bad about what he did and he mentions he "warn't going to let Jim find out it was all [his] fault, not if [he] could help it" (pg65). Huck still valued Jim because he decided not to tell him that it was his fault for placing the snakeskin there.