Jim's tall-tale was only stretching the truth and never caused reason for harm anywhere. His lie was safe and told only for fun and personal reasons, similarly to Tom's.
Mark Twain once said "Golf is a good walk wasted" but back to relevance, he also said, "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." This is true in Huck Finn's interpretations of the truth and the distortions he makes out of ignorance and misunderstanding; Huck is however, "more powerful than his world, because he is more aware than any other person in it" (Eliot 350). It is Huck's lack of education that allows him to be "untouched" by society and this is key in allowing Twain to make his observations of civilizations" idiosyncrasies. When Tom tells Huck his fairy tales, such as "Arabian Nights," Huck is enticed by the idea of rubbing lamps or rings to find a genie that would be responsible for granting his wishes. Huck ends up and "rubbed till he sweated like an Injun" but when nothing happens he decides that rubbing an "old tin lamp and an iron ring" was just some of Tom's lies. Huck's literal interpretation of Tom's stories allows Twain to point out how ridiculous it all seems when there is a person who does not realize the difference between fairy tales and real life.
Huck is the victim of his literal understandings throughout the novel. One particular case is the circus he witnesses. During the circus, what appears to be a random drunk man in the audience steps out into the circus ring. The drunk man wants to ride one of the circus horses and the people in the crowd began to "holler at him and make fun of him" which mad the man mad and impossible to control so the ring leader made a long speech apologizing to the crowd, but that he was going to pacify the drunk man by letting him ride a horse (Twain 163). So when the "drunk" man climbed on a horse and began doing trick riding, Huck "was all a tremble to see his danger" (Twain 164).
