Francois,

   Good work! This paper shows a lot of independent thought about the question of 
   why Twain chose to use humor the way he did in the final chapters of Huckleberry Finn.   
   The writing is also good on the whole, although there are a few awkward patches.  

   Please see the comments below for more detail(!)  

   page 1: "limiting controversy" -- maybe "as a way to deflect possible controversy"

   page 1: "that blacks face as slaves" -- tense problem here.  When Twain was writing, 
   slavery had been outlawed everywhere for 20 years already.  

   "From Huck’s point of view, Jim was a man who was more morally directed and sincere 
   compared to many of those he visited and interacted with on his journey, such as the 
   Grangerfords and the Shepardsons, two conflicted and violent aristocratic families" --
   I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "morally directed."  Also, I don't think the 
   comparison between Jim and the Grangerfords or Shepherdsons is the best one to use
   to say that Jim has a better inner sense of morality.  Those two feuding families
   are caught up in a destructive situation and they are certainly murdering each other 
   but the individuals involved seem to be pretty reasonable people apart from the fact
   that they cannot break out of the cycle of violence.  There are much worse people 
   that Huck and Jim encounter!

   Saying that Huck "is a matured and grown man who can make decisions for himself"
   seems like an overstatement.  Huck has had to grow up fast because of the
   situations in which he has found himself.  But I don't think the maturation process 
   is completely finished by the time the story ends in the novel.  For example, he 
   hasn't ever had a romantic relationship with a woman by that point.  

   page 3 -- "divert away" is redundant.  The word "divert" by itself includes
   the idea of directing attention away from something.  

   page 4 -- I think your analysis of Twain's possible motives for presenting 
   Tom Sawyer's plot with Huck to steal Jim out of the Phelps farm as the culmination
   of the novel is mostly very astute and quite interesting.  There is an issue I see, 
   though, about exactly who the audience Twain was addressing was and how they would 
   have viewed the issue of slavery at the time the book was written.  Don't forget 
   that this book appeared in 1885, so slavery had been outlawed for 20 years.  While 
   there probably were *some* people who wanted to go back to the slave-holding society 
   that had existed before the Civil War at that point, I think most Southerners would 
   have accepted the fact that that world was gone forever.  But a lot of the 
   racist attitudes that made the slave-holding system possible were also still 
   pretty firmly in place.  So people who might be expected to criticize Twain for his
   story would probably not be actively "pro-slavery," but they might be 
   "anti-accepting blacks as fully human" even so, and they would almost certainly 
   be "anti-criticizing the old South."   Think about the fact that in some quarters
   even today the Confederate battle flag is seen as a symbol of a "Southern heritage,"
   of an aristocratic and cultured white society, of the "noble sacrifice" of the 
   Confederate soldiers in the Civil War, etc., etc.  I agree Twain was probably 
   both trying to discredit some of those attitudes with his satire, and as you say, at 
   the same time trying cover his own tracks and deflect the possible criticisms
   his satirical targets might throw back at him(!)

   page 5 -- "Such descriptions are meant to humor the reader" -- careful: I don't
   understand the word "humor" here -- to "humor" someone doesn't mean to make someone laugh.  
   "Humor" as a verb means something like "to go along with someone's wishes to keep 
   him or her happy (especially when the wishes are unreasonable)."
 

   Content/Evidence:  A

   Structure/Mechanics:  A-