What would you do if you knew one of your friends was in trouble? Would you save them or try to avoid the situation and let someone else deal with it? This is exactly the problem that Huck Finn faces in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It is a novel about the friendship between a young boy, named Huck, and a black slave, named Jim. Over the course of the plot Huck and Jim form a bond that proves that color should not be a barrier between two people's friendship by completing endless adventures and always remaining united. The author, Mark Twain, grew up in one of the fifteen slave states and this clearly influenced his writing in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River he experienced a lot of racism and witnessed how truly cruel society can be (Merriman) and this affected him deeply. The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain supports the theme of friendship found in unexpected places. Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida. At the age of four, his family of nine moved to the banks of the Mississippi River in Hannibal, Missouri. His family was happy there but not all of his memories of the river were particularly pleasant. Because Missouri was one of the fifteen slave states, it was subject to racism, and Twain grew up witnessing lynchings, mobs, racism, and general inhumane treatment of African Americans. One of Twain's most horrific memories was "the murder of a defenseless slave by a ruthless master, and of course the grim sight of chained slaves was itself almost constant along the river docks" (Howard). The sightings at the river were not Twain's only experience with African American slaves, although his father and uncle both owned slaves. “When Twain visited his uncle's farm, he enjoyed playing in the slave quarters and listening to their stories and spirituals, which he carried with him throughout his life” (http://www.marktwainhouse.org/theman/bio. shtml) When Twain left the South forever, he felt it was his duty to repay the debt he felt every white man owed to every black man because of all the cruelty he had seen them subjected to. Although the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a sequel to the light novel Tom Sawyer, it shows the darker aspects of growing up near the Mississippi River in a slave state (Howard).