Jack, 

     
       While your writing is generally good and you have caught some of the meaning
    of the "deformed conscience" and "sound heart" that Twain mentioned, there are some 
    other ways in which I don't think you have completely understood what Twain was trying
    to say.  You also seem to have misinterpreted or left out aspects of the story.  

       For example, you say on page 4 that Huck "doesn’t really know whether being friends 
    with Jim is right or wrong because of his upbringing."  But that is not quite correct.  
    In fact, the situation is more complicated and more interesting than that.  Huck's 
    sound heart is telling him that being friends with Jim *is right*, but his deformed 
    conscience from his upbringing is telling him it definitely *is wrong*.  In other words, 
    he's getting contradictory indications from those two aspects of his character. In order 
    to do what he knows is right in his heart, he has to fight against all the feelings 
    of conscience that his upbringing has instilled in him.  You do say things like this 
    earlier, so you're not really following up on that by saying Huck doesn't know what 
    is right.   
  
      The major omission is that you never really address exactly what the "deformation"
    in Huck's conscience is or where it came from.  
  
      Also, I don't really "buy" your idea that the phrase "honest injun" itself has a lot of 
    meaning for Huck's relationship with Jim.  It's true that Huck makes promises to Jim
    and he's maybe the only white person who has kept those promises. You're right to bring
    that out.  But there are questions about exactly what the "honest injun" might mean and 
    I think you might be reading too much into those words.  (By the way, the explanation 
    you give on page 3 cites an online source.  In the groundrules for the assignment, I 
    asked you *not* to consult or cite such sources for this paper. Please read the assignment 
    sheets more carefully!  This is not finally such a big point, though, so I'm not assessing
    a penalty for that.)  

      For instance, "honest Injun" might be just a phrase that Twain has Huck use because 
    it was fairly common at the time and because it illustrates some of the prejudiced 
    attitudes he has picked up from his upbringing.  I have read elsewhere that the 
    interpretation you are quoting (that native Americans were viewed as inherently more 
    truthful than whites, so "honest injun" would mean nothing more than "trust me, I'm 
    telling you the truth") is not the only possible one.  It's also possible that the 
    original meaning (for the white people using the expression) was *sarcastic,* more 
    along the lines of the nasty phrase "Indian giver."  Let me explain: Native American 
    cultures did not place as much importance on the idea of personal property as the 
    European cultures that white settlers were familiar with.  So misunderstandings often 
    arose between native Americans and Europeans when the Europeans thought they were 
    purchasing something (mostly land) from native Americans.  Europeans thought they 
    were purchasing exclusive use of the land, while the native Americans thought they 
    were only sharing the right to use the land with the Europeans, and maybe only for a 
    limited time.  So an "Indian giver" was one who gave or sold something away and then 
    tried to take it back. "Honest injun" might have started out as a sarcastic phrase 
    "honest as an Indian (giver)."  You're right, of course, that native Americans (still) 
    see the phrase "honest injun" as offensive.  Twain might have appreciated that and 
    used the phrase for that reason too (just the same way he has Huck unthinkingly use 
    the "n-word" all the time).   

      There are also some issues regarding your use of quotations as evidence.  For
    instance, the quotation from Chapter 20 in the paragraph at the bottom of page 1 essentially
    just describes how Huck and Jim get their raft back on the river.  I don't see that it
    relates to Huck's decision to forego the $200 or .  In other words, I don't see that it
    is relevant to the point you are trying to make there about how Huck's heart has to 
    defeat his conscience at that point in the story.  

    Content/Evidence:  B-
 
    Structure/Mechanics:  B