This makes Huck turn away from societies restrictions telling him what to do, and follow his heart. After making this decision though, he faces inner turmoil again after Jim is sold to the Phelps: .
"It was a close place. I took . . . up [the letter I'd written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right then, I'll go to hell"-and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming" (Twain 206). .
These lines can be described as the moral climax of the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Jim has just been sold to the Phelps by the duke and king. Huck faces great guilt and peril over whether or not he should free Jim, eventually he starts to write a letter to Miss Watson to return Jim. But as he writes the letter, his thoughts turn to the friendship he has with Jim. The logical consequences of Huck's action, rather than the lessons society has taught him, drive Huck. He decides that going to "hell," if it means following his gut and not society's hypocritical and cruel principles, is a better option than going to everyone else's heaven. Paulsen states "Part of the reason Huck may have decided to reject society's teaching at this time-which would have demanded that he turn in Jim-has to do with his own position in society. Huck clearly states that he is not going back again, that is, to society. He has decided to leave it and all of its teachings behind for freedom and total independence." Huck's turning away from society is a form of existentialism, "Existentialism is concerned, at its most basic level, with the affirmation of freedom and the refusal to subordinate personal awareness to abstract concepts and dehumanizing social structures.
