Tom Sawyer is not at all interested in the moral issues around slavery that have come to preoccupy Huck as he helps Jim to freedom. Huck struggles with whether it is right or wrong to help Jim to escape—Tom, however, just isn't interested in those problems. He wants adventure and a good time.
When Tom arrives on the scene, he therefore sets back Huck's moral development. Huck is too willing to be led by Tom, a boy he admires greatly both for his middle class respectability and his imagination. When Huck simply wants to slip off Jim's chains and set him free, Tom says:
Who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that?
Therefore, Huck participates in the games that prolong Jim's agony—all to please Tom's desire to make life conform to books.
While black writers, such as Toni Morrison, have accused Twain of being more concerned with a white person's moral redemption than the fate of a black slave, it is clear that Twain deeply opposed the racism that made slavery possible. Huck's moral growth comes when he sees Jim as human being just like him, rather than as a piece of property.
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