Just Like "El Pueblo".

A minstrel show is a “troupe of performers in blackface typically given a comic program of negro songs and jokes” (wordnetweb.princeton.edu). Basically the performers are mocking the negros. And more important than the actual conversation that is the taking place is the negros answer. What is funny for the audience or at least for me was Bones’ answers. For example, Bones says:

Bones. “Yes, saw. De day I went to de house, I -- golly! -- I dressed myself to kill, and my ole trunk was empty. Well, just as de
gal seed me, she cove right in -- she was a gone coon. When I left, she edged up to me and whispered, "you're too sweet to
live." Next day I got a billy-doo.”

And the interlocutor says:

Interlocutor. “How do you know it was a billet-doux?”

And then Bones responds like this:

Bones. “Cause Billy Doo was de name of de boy dat brought it.”

Obviously, Bones did not understand what the interlocutor was saying. And the point of that was to show hot negros were uneducated and naïve. The article questions whether Twain in a camouflaged way was using Huck and Jim to illustrate a minstrel show. Looking as the examples given I have to agree with the author when he says that in “Hucks´ lines one hears the correct accent of Mr. Interlocutor, and in Jim´s replies, the comic inadequacies of Mr. Bones”. In one of the examples given in the article there is a conversation between Huck and Jim about Jim´s investment. Huck asks Jim:

“What did you speculate in, Jim”

And Jims says:

“ Well fust I tackled stock”

Huck asks:

“What kind of stock?”

And Jim answers:

“Why, live stock -- cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. De cow up 'n' died on my han's."

More or less it’s the same situation that I is written above. Jim and Bones don’t understand what they are being, they think its something different reflecting their stupidity. Before they got to talking about the investment they were talking about bad luck signs and Huck asks Jim if “if there warn't any good-luck signs. He says there were. And explains to Huck that if you had a hairy chest and arms you were going to be rich. This reminded me of my maid and the people that I know from Colombia that live in “pueblos”. Just like Jim believed in those good and back luck charms, they believe in things that for us seem completely irrational. Some believe that if you take a pill with lemon, since the lemon is too acid it would cut (cortar) the effect of the pill. Others believe that if the slept while their hair was wet they would go crazy. There is no reason to offend them for that for we just find it funny.

There are two ways in which I see this. Either Mark Twain was trying to portray Jim as a real as he possibly could. Or he was disguising a minstrel. I believe and agree with the article because the examples are very clear. People may see it as something bad and offensive like the nigger word in the book. But I see it as another way that Twain was making his novel more adopted to the situation that was going on at the time.