The raft was a place where Huck and Jim could talk and get to know each other as man to man and not as master to slave. It was a place where race didn't matter. They were the same. Huck said, "We...let it [the raft] float where the current would; then we turned on the tubes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things: we were always naked, day and night. , whenever the mosquitoes let us." Huck didn't care that Jim was black; Jim didn't care that Huck was white. Floating in the middle of the river might be the only place where this black man and this white boy can talk together as equals. For this reason the raft is a very important symbol. Huck can also be seen as a symbol of America in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Huck says that he must "leave for the country before the others", this indicates that he is taking on the role of the pioneer: heading into a new and wild country. Huck doesn't want to be a "civilized" man. When a place becomes “sevilized” in some way, it moves towards a new frontier. Like most early Americans, Huck was intelligent but ignorant, a little wild but honest and moral, and not too fond of table manners. So Huck was like most early Americans