Jim is a black man who is fleeing slavery; Huck, a 13-year-old white boy, joins him in spite of his own conventional understanding and the law.

Academic studies include Lisa Cohen Minnick's 2004 Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech[7] and Raphaell Berthele's 2000 "Translating African-American Vernacular English into German: The problem of 'Jim' in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn".

[9] Jim himself is introduced at the beginning of Chapter Two, seen at midnight by the two boys, Huck and Tom, standing silhouetted in the doorway of the outdoor detached kitchen.

His character and perceptions dominate the novel and include spirituality, parental tenderness, and nonviolence: he leaves unmolested two rogues – Jim's term is "rascals" – who have taken over the raft despite their vulnerability as they sleep drunk.

Percival Everett's book James, portrays The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's perspective and adds an alternate ending to the story.