Rocketbook Presents:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Written by Michael Lee

Copyright ©2007 by Rocketbook, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced

in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.

Rocketbook is a registered trademark of Rocketbook, Inc. Published by Rocketbook Inc.

Rocketbook Presents: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain’s 1884 novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is the story of Huck Finn, a teenager who sails down the Mississippi on a raft with an escaped slave named Jim. Along the way, Huck decides that the purpose of their journey should be to deliver Jim to a free state and away from danger. Their plan is foiled along the way by suspicious townspeople, a pair of con artists, and even Huck’s best friend Tom Sawyer. The novel charts not only the river journey but also Huck’s developing consciousness and maturity. Chapters 1-2 Summary In the first two chapters of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we meet Huck Finn, the mischievous and charming teenage narrator of the novel. The novel begins in roughly 1840 in Hannibal, Missouri, a town that sits alongside the Mississippi River. Twain’s novel is actually the continuation of his earlier book entitled The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which, as Huck is quick to tell us, ends with Huck and Tom Sawyer finding six thousand dollars of stolen money in a cave. This money was invested in the care of Judge Thatcher, who keeps it for Huck, parceling out a dollar a day for him to live on. Because Huck’s mother is dead and his father, Pap, is a violent drunk who only rarely shows up in town, Huck has been adopted by the Widow Douglas, who along with her sister, Miss Watson, attempts to educate and civilize the country-born Huck. Huck runs away, but Tom convinces him to go back to the care of the widow because he is forming a band of robbers, and this is the only way he will let Huck join. Huck returns to the Widow Douglas, and much to his annoyance, she attempts to covert him to Christianity. Huck soon grows tired of this comfortable lifestyle, and one night climbs out of the house when he hears Tom call him from outside. Walking the grounds of the house, the boys decide to play a prank on the widow’s slave, Jim, a large, middle-aged man, who has fallen asleep in the kitchen doorway. They remove Jim’s hat and hang it on a tree branch over his head, and Huck tells us that the next morning, when Jim woke, he blamed witches for moving his hat. Jim then forms a story about what the witches did with his hat, and, through the inventiveness of his storytelling, becomes something of a celebrity among other local slaves. Huck then tells us about Tom Sawyer’s band of robbers, which is made up of other teenagers from the area. The gang, under Tom Sawyer’s leadership, and guided by their own obsessions with storybooks, decides that robbery and murder will be their primary goals as members. The meeting adjourns, and Huck then returns home with his filthy clothes just as day is breaking. Chapters 1-2 Analysis

Since Huck Finn is our narrator for the entire novel, we should ask ourselves whether or not we should believe him. Is he always reliable? The answer is yes; Huck relates the incidents of this story with remarkable clarity and sensitivity. Huck has a certain awareness of nature and his fellow creatures that truly sets him apart from all other characters in the novel. Now, it’s one thing to follow along with Huck’s narrative and just enjoy its sense of humor and adventure. It’s quite another to think critically about what Huck is saying, and decide for ourselves whether or not he’s giving us the full picture. Although Huck is honest with us readers, there are times when he fails to see the significance of what’s happening. Other times he will come very close to having a powerful insight about himself, and then pull back at the last second and leave it up to us to figure it out. Keep this in mind as you read. A theme that surfaces almost immediately in Chapter Two is the power of stories. The cruel trick that Tom plays on Jim with his hat becomes a vehicle for Jim’s story. Jim creates an increasingly wild story about witches riding him all over the country while he slept. Huck tells us that other slaves would come from “miles” to hear Jim tell the story, and although completely untrue, his story made him “more looked up to” than any other slave in the area. Stories also have a big effect on Tom Sawyer and his gang. They plan to rob and murder only because they’ve read about such acts in the books they love. Finally, as a modern student, you might be bothered by Huck’s liberal use of the word “nigger.” As offensive as that word is today, Twain was accurately trying to portray the dialect of a Missouri country boy in the 1840s, a time in which that word was commonplace. Chapters 3-4 Summary After scolding Huck for the condition of his clothes, Miss Watson then tells him that if he prays every day, he will get anything he asks for. Huck, who is never willing to discount someone’s point of view before considering it first, heads into the woods to think about prayer. Ultimately, he concludes that he feels pretty ambivalent about prayer, but he does find certain things to admire in the Widow Douglas’ view of religion, even if he thinks himself too “ignorant” to understand it. Huck then reveals that while staying with the widow, his father was reported to have drowned, but Huck senses fearfully that his father is still alive, and is unconvinced by the report. Huck then admits that when he and the band of robbers meet, they only pretend to murder and rob people. The closest they get to mayhem is breaking up a Sunday school picnic and chasing the children away. Chapter Four begins with Huck attending school, but he admits that it bores him, and he often plays hooky because the beatings he gets the next day cheer him up. One morning, Huck spills salt, and ever superstitious, worries about the bad luck this might bring him. After finding tracks around the property in the newly fallen snow, Huck asks Judge Thatcher to take all of his money, fearful that his father will return and demand it. Huck also enlists the help of Jim, the widow’s slave, to tell his fortune by means of a hairball. Jim tells Huck that his father doesn’t know what he’s doing yet, and that’s he’s got both a white

and a black angel hovering around him at all times. Jim then reads Huck’s fortune, telling him that he will have considerable trouble in his life, and that if he isn’t careful, he’ll someday be hanged. When Huck returns to his room that night, he finds his father, Pap, a pale, scraggly, malicious man of fifty, waiting for him in a chair. Chapters 3-4 Analysis Chapter Three begins with Huck’s own complex and well-reasoned look at the religion of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson. Frustrated by Miss Watson’s view of God, Huck goes to the forest, where he is most comfortable, and meditates. He tells us that sometimes the Widow Douglas’ view of God made his “mouth water,” but then Miss Watson would always come along and “knock it all down again” the next day. Huck ultimately decides that there are two Gods: the Widow Douglas’ and Miss Watson’s. He sees Miss Watson’s God as cruel and unforgiving, and the widow’s as kind. This is a terrific insight for a fourteen-year-old boy, but Huck doesn’t stop there. He tells us that if he could belong to one God, it would certainly be the widow’s, but that since he is “so ignorant and . . . low-down and ornery,” he thinks he wouldn’t do that God a whole lot of good. This reversal says a lot about Huck. For one, he is incredibly humble to believe himself so ignorant that the widow’s God would actually be hurt by possessing him. Apart from humility, there is something innate in Huck that rejects everything civilized. He associates wealth, manners, parents, and even religion with civilization, of which he usually wants no part. As much as the widow’s God appeals to him, Huck ultimately doesn’t want any part of Him, and he uses this humility as a possible brace or excuse against Him. By saying, “God wouldn’t want any part of me,” he’s actually saying “I don’t want any part of God.” An important line comes at the end of Chapter Three, when Huck, frustrated after one of Tom Sawyer’s stories doesn’t come true, tells us that he thinks differently from Tom Sawyer, who believes the stories he reads and tells. Huck doesn’t believe them, and tells us that they “have all the marks of Sunday school.” Huck already seems to be growing into his own person. He’s moving beyond Tom’s stories just as he’s moved beyond the stories he learned in the Bible. Both, to him, are unhelpful and untrue. Huck would much rather rely on the folk superstition of someone like Jim, whose hairball apparently tells them their fortunes. Chapters 5-6 Summary Huck is immediately afraid of his father because of all the physical abuse he’s suffered at the hands of Pap in the past. Pap harasses Huck about his nice clothes, education, and the warm place in which Huck gets to sleep. He threatens Huck, and demands money from him. Huck denies that he has money, but gives Pap a dollar to get rid of him. Pap leaves and immediately gets drunk, and demands Huck’s money from Judge Thatcher, who will

not give it up. Thatcher and the Widow Douglas go to court, where they attempt to become Huck’s legal guardians, but a new judge who is unfamiliar with Huck’s abusive situation states that the court has no right to separate a father from his son. Pap again threatens Huck with violence if his son doesn’t give him money, so Huck borrows three dollars from Thatcher. Pap immediately blows this money on whiskey and is thrown in jail. The new judge decides to attempt to reform Pap, so he invites him over to his house, where Pap is given new clothes and a bath and stern religious talk from the judge and his wife. Pap fools the couple with his groveling and fakes his conversion to sobriety, and leaves the judge’s house to get drunk again. While trying to sneak back into the judge’s house before daybreak, Pap falls off the porch and breaks his arm in two places. When Pap is healed, he begins to show his face again, harassing both Judge Thatcher for the money and Huck for attending school. One day Pap kidnaps Huck and takes him in a skiff across the Mississippi River to the Illinois side, where he and the boy live in a secluded log cabin. Although Huck admits to eventually enjoying fishing and spending lazy time with his father, Huck is a prisoner, and Pap continues to beat him, so Huck plans an escape. Locked in the cabin one day while Pap goes to town, Huck is able to saw at one of the logs. Pap returns before he can finish, bringing back enough food for a long stay, and he gets drunk and rails against the government and curses everything he can think of. Pap gets so drunk that he begins to hallucinate, and chases Huck around the cabin trying to kill him. Pap eventually tires and passes out in front of the door, promising to kill his son when he awakens. Huck takes a loaded gun down from the wall, aims it at his father, and waits. Chapters 5-6 Analysis Although Pap might seem to be a cartoonish and evil character, he is worth thinking about, because his son Huck also shares many of his obsessions and preoccupations. For example, there is Pap’s verbal abuse of Huck when he discovers his son in Widow Douglas’ house and accuses him of trying to be better than his father. Huck has now gone to school and learned to read and write, two things that Pap did not have a chance to do. Although Pap is unfair to Huck, he’s voicing some of the same anger that Huck did in the previous chapter. Pap is a miserable alcoholic, whose dependence on alcohol keeps him from improving his social stature. Because of this, he is hypercritical of any “civilized” characteristics. It’s not enough for Pap that he has remained apart from and ignorant of society, he also wants his son to live the same way. If Twain satirized Miss Watson and her religion in the last chapter, Pap’s white trash heritage is satirized here. Pap is racist, narrow-minded, and self-pitying. Twain certainly shows the absurdity of Pap’s complaints, because nowhere do we see Pap actively trying to improve his situation by working or quitting booze. Huck is very much his father’s son. Both share a distaste for school, religion, and manners. Huck even admits later, when Pap kidnaps him and takes him to the cabin, that, apart from the beatings that Pap regularly gives him, he’s happy to be away from the smothering nature of Miss Watson’s social customs. Huck enjoys the freedom of living in

the wilderness: the hunting and fishing and free time. The irony is that, Huck’s “freedom” isn’t really freedom at all. When he’s not around, Pap literally keeps Huck locked inside the cabin, sometimes for days on end. Huck even describes what a night with Pap is like, a terrifying scene in which a drunken Pap tries to murder his son. To Huck, ultimately, both society and his father’s cabin in the wilderness are unhealthy and confining. This is why he will plan his escape from Pap not back to the care of the Widow Douglas and her financial security, but rather to a place where neither of them may find him. Chapters 7-8 Summary Pap wakes Huck up the next morning, and Huck must invent a lie to explain why he has the gun. He tells Pap that someone tried to break in the night before, and that he was lying in wait for them. Pap believes the story, and tells Huck to check the fishing lines at the river. Alone at the river, Huck finds an empty canoe floating by, and hoping to later escape on it, stows it away in a creek. After breakfast, Huck decides that when he escapes, he’d prefer to escape from the widow as well as his father. After collecting good driftwood floating by in the river, Pap decides to take the logs with him into town to sell, so he locks Huck in the cabin. Huck is able to saw his way out before Pap reaches the other side of the river. Then Huck cleans the log cabin and puts all the household goods—including the food, ammunition, and the gun—into his canoe. Next, he catches a hog and slaughters it in the cabin to make it look like he was murdered. To throw Pap and the authorities off his tracks, he punctures a hole in the bag of corn meal and carries it to the lake on the other side of the river, so it will appear that his attackers fled via the lake. He waits in the canoe until he hears Pap return, then Huck paddles several miles to Jackson’s Island, which is on the river. He docks on the uninhabited island on the Illinois shore, and finds a spot in the forest and falls asleep. Huck awakens in the afternoon, and discovers a ferry boat out on the water searching for his body. Huck sees Pap, Judge Thatcher, even Tom Sawyer, and almost everyone he knows on board the ferry. The ferry, having no luck, searches the Missouri side of the river and then returns back to town. Later, while circling the island in his canoe, Huck stumbles on a campfire where he finds Jim, the Widow Douglas’ slave, sleeping beside it. After Huck explains to Jim how he faked his own death, Jim reveals that he has run away from Miss Watson and the widow, because he overheard Miss Watson’s plan to sell him down the river to New Orleans. Chapters 7-8 Analysis Although Huck often claims to be ignorant, and that he doesn’t always know how to phrase what he is feeling, he’s actually more reliant on words than he knows. When Pap catches him in the morning with the rifle, Huck responds that he was lying in wait for an intruder that tried to get in the night before. Although Huck is able to think on the run and

answer Pap without hesitation, it is by no means a simple thing to do. Huck knows that Pap is especially fearful of people coming to take his son from him, and with this one line, Huck is both sufficiently answering Pap’s question and also preying on his father’s fears of being robbed. This brilliant strategy shifts the focus away from the fact that Huck has armed himself and onto the fact that he and Pap might be in danger. Time and time again in the novel, Huck, when questioned, uses this ability to instantly size up the situation, and without missing a beat, manipulate the listener to his advantage. His shrewdness helps him out in many close calls. Jim does his own share of manipulating Huck when they first encounter each other on Jackson Island. Jim knows that Huck is a man of his word, so in order to get Huck to stay quiet, before he reveals to Huck that he has run away, Jim makes Huck promise not to tell the reason Jim is on the island. If Jim hadn’t have made Huck promise and had simply told him that he had run away, Huck might have been less inclined to keep quiet. Jim, like Huck, is often very adept at getting exactly what he needs. And since Huck gives his word, and because he considers his word important, he promises to keep quiet. Both Huck and Jim are outlaws now, and even Huck realizes that selling out Jim would be to accidentally reveal his own supposedly dead identity. Both men have the power to rat the other out, and this tie binds both of them to silence. Chapters 9-11 Summary Later in the day, Huck takes Jim to a cave that he discovered while exploring Jackson Island, and since it offers a good hiding place, they make a shelter out of it and keep out of the storm. It rains for many days, and the Mississippi rises over its banks, and much of Jackson Island is flooded. During the flood, Jim and Huck find pine logs as they float by, which they construct into a raft. One night, at the head of the island they find a flooded house, and on the top floor they see a dead man. Although the man’s identity won’t be revealed until the last page of the novel, the dead man is Pap, Huck’s father, and Jim smoothly distracts Huck, so he won’t look at Pap’s face and identify him. Huck and Jim acquire a knife, candles, and women’s clothing from the house and stow it all away in the canoe. The next morning, Huck is preoccupied with thoughts of the dead man, and although he tries to engage Jim as to how and why he died, Jim protects Huck and drops the conversation, stating that talking about the dead man will bring bad luck. Three days later, Huck kills a rattlesnake in the cave, and thinking to play a prank on Jim, curls the snake up on his bedroll. When Jim returns to the cave at night, he is bitten by the snake’s mate, who has curled up around the one Huck killed. Jim kills the pain with whiskey, and Huck cares for him. After four days, Jim begins to feel better. Several days later, Huck decides to head back across the river to find out the latest news. Jim suggests that he dress like a girl, and Huck agrees. The next evening, Huck arrives back in Hannibal and speaks with a middle-aged woman alone in her home. Although the woman, Judith Loftus, recognizes right away that Huck is a boy, she does not realize he is Huckleberry Finn. She reveals to Huck that although some people suspect Pap of murdering Huck, others now believe Jim is the culprit, since he ran away the same night as the murder.

Also, she tells Huck that there is a 300-dollar reward out for Jim, and that her husband and another man had set out for Jackson Island several hours before to look for Jim. Huck leaves Mrs. Loftus’ house as soon as possible without arousing suspicion, and canoes to Jackson Island. He makes a small fire away from the cave to distract the hunters, and races to the cave and rouses Jim. Then the two of them pack everything they can carry on the raft. Without being seen, they silently float away from the island on the raft with the canoe in tow. Chapters 9-11 Analysis We can think of the flood on Jackson’s Island as Twain’s symbolic reference to the biblical flood in the book of Genesis. Huck and Jim are like Noah and his family, marooned up in their ark on the high ground of their cave with all the animals of the island. It’s important to think of the implications of a flood: it ruins or covers over everything beneath it, and often forces any survivors to start from scratch. In the bible, Noah and his family had to restart the human race because they were the only survivors of the flood. Now nothing that dramatic happens in Chapter Ten, but we can compare Huck and Jim to Noah. Both Huck and Jim have left their old identities, Huck as a member of society and Jim as a slave, and as soon as the water subsides, they plan to sail down the river as “new” people, in control of their own destinies. By the end of Chapter 11, Huck is already adopting the personality of a country girl, even dressing in female clothes, and Jim is adopting the role of a father. It is Jim, after all, who recognizes that the dead man in the flooded house is Pap, and if the dead man is Pap, Huck is truly an orphan, completely without parents. Jim steps in then, shielding Huck, much as a father would a young child, from the ghastly sight of his murdered father. It is only in due time, when Jim feels that Huck is ready for that information, that he discloses the dead man’s identity. Pay attention to the ways in which Huck and Jim swap and play around with their own identities as the novel progresses. Before the novel is finished, Huck will play a girl, an Englishman, and even Tom Sawyer. Jim will play a slave, a free man, and a Middle-Easterner. Chapters 12-13 Summary Deciding to travel only at night, Huck and Jim float south on the Mississippi until dawn. Clearing a space in the cottonwoods along the Illinois shore, they spend the day watching the steamboats pass by. When it gets dark, Jim builds a wigwam on the raft for sleeping and for protection from bad weather. By the fifth night of their journey, they pass St. Louis. Huck and Jim feel guilty about stealing items from on shore, so they make a list of items they will never “borrow.” On the fifth night, after they have passed St. Louis during a thunderstorm, they discover a wrecked steamboat called the Sir Walter Scott in the middle of the river. Talking hopefully of all the goods they might find on board, Huck

convinces a skittish Jim to board the boat. While on the boat, they discover three criminals fighting over their share of the found goods. Two of the men have tied up another man who is lying on the deck, and, aiming pistols at him, they threaten to kill him. Huck and Jim narrowly miss being discovered, and Huck, influenced by Tom Sawyer and the books he has read, decides to try to strand all three criminals on the steamboat by untying their skiff. His and Jim’s plans quickly change when Jim reveals that their own raft has come loose from where they’ve tied it. After searching the steamboat, they discover the criminals’ skiff, and after boarding her, they cut the line. They drift downstream away from the steamboat, and Huck feels remorse because the criminals might be doomed if the steamboat were to sink. They find their raft and unload the goods stolen from the criminals, and Jim gets on. Huck promises to meet up with him, and tells Jim to shine a light when he feels that he’s gone two miles. Huck paddles toward a ferry boat, and tells a night watchman a lie about his family being on the steamboat. The watchman runs to get help, but just as he’s gone, Huck watches as the steamboat comes sliding by, sinking deeper and deeper into the river as it goes. Huck finds Jim downriver several hours later, and at dawn they take shelter and sleep, in Huck’s words, like “dead people.” Chapters 12-13 Analysis Huck is incredibly receptive to the mysteries that surround him at every moment. In the beginning of the novel, he talks a lot about the sound of wind in the trees, the lonesome feeling certain things in the natural and the human worlds give him. For Huck, there is something both scary and thrilling in these mysteries. Huck loves to engage with them. We can see his desire to board the sinking steamboat in this way. Huck doesn’t board the boat to find out that there are murderers on it, or to figure out why it sank. He simply wants to go aboard because, lying on its side all alone in the river, it gives him a feeling of mystery, and he wants to poke around a little to see what he can see. When he finds the robbers aboard the boat, his inner Tom Sawyer gets the best of him, and he invents a plot in which he and Jim can punish the robbers and ride off with the stolen goods. But before all that happens, we should understand that Huck has a real affinity and curiosity about mysteries. He doesn’t try and solve them; he just likes to investigate their strangeness. This curiosity, when coupled with the Tom Sawyer-like desire for adventure, often puts him and Jim in peril. Huck is so eager to board the boat, he won’t even listen to Jim’s well-reasoned argument that they’ve had good luck so far, and that they’d be foolish to test it. Even though Tom Sawyer isn’t present for a majority of the book, we can’t overlook his influence over Huck. It’s so strong that even though he isn’t there, Huck behaves as if Tom were there, egging him on. One of the ways Huck grows up in the novel is when he begins to shed Tom’s influence over him and becomes his own thinking person. We can see Huck’s character developing, especially in Chapter 13, when he begins to consider the consequences of his actions. Looking back at the stranded robbers on the sinking boat, Huck empathetically places himself in their shoes, and tries to feel what

they might be feeling. This empathy leads him to send someone out to the ship to rescue them, though the help comes too late. The irony of the scene is that, for all of Huck’s fellow feeling with the robbers, he doesn’t once allow himself to stand in Jim’s shoes. If he did, he might have understood Jim’s reservations about boarding the boat in the first place. Chapters 14-15 Summary Chapter fourteen begins the following day, as Huck and Jim survey the loot they acquired from the Sir Walter Scott. Jim argues that they shouldn’t have any more “adventures” that endanger both of them. Jim states that these events are doubly dangerous for him, because there’s always the chance he will be found and returned to Miss Watson, who will be so furious with him she will certainly sell him down the river. Jim and Huck discuss King Solomon, and debate whether or not he was the wisest man that ever lived, as Huck believes. Jim argues eloquently that King Solomon was actually quite cruel and wasteful, which frustrates Huck. Huck and Jim set their destination at Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi. They plan to sell the raft and take a steamboat up the Ohio, and into the free states that have abolished slavery, where Jim can live without worry of being found. On their second night on the way to Cairo, Huck and Jim find themselves in a thick fog. Huck gets in the canoe and tries to tie it and the raft to some trees, but the current separates the canoe from the raft, and Jim sails on ahead. They “whoop” to each other until their calls become further and further apart, and then Huck realizes that they have been separated by an island in the middle of the river. Huck eventually falls asleep, and later wakes out of the fog. Finally he locates the raft and boards her silently, so as to not wake Jim, who’s asleep. Huck wakes Jim and pretends that they’ve never been separated. Jim believes that he’s been dreaming, until he notices that the raft has gathered trash while in the fog, and he condemns Huck for making a fool of him, and goes to bed. Huck feels awful for his trick, and though it’s difficult for him, he apologizes to a slave. Chapters 14-15 Analysis Chapters 14 and 15 might be the most important in the novel for understanding the layers of irony at play. The discussion between Huck and Jim about King Solomon offers us a good look at Twain’s ability to undermine ideas that we might hold dear and to make us laugh at the same time. Contrary to what we might expect, Huck is absolutely no match for Jim’s skills as a debater. In that particular story about King Solomon, two women are arguing that they are each the mother of a certain child. To settle who is actually the mother, Solomon threatens to cut the baby in two, reasoning that the woman who opposes the cutting is the true mother, while the false mother will argue for the cutting. In the

argument, Jim states that King Solomon, a revered character of the Old Testament, is a fool for threatening to cut the baby in two, because there is no logic in the idea that the woman would want half a child, because a child cut in half would be dead, and therefore useless. Huck, on the other hand, reverts to simply regurgitating that Solomon was indeed the wisest man, which is exactly what the widow has always told him. All Huck can ultimately do is tell Jim that he’s missed the point of the story. Jim fires back with an even more rigorous assault on Solomon, telling Huck that he doesn’t understand the deeper level of the story. To Jim, Solomon’s decision to cut the child in two smacks of wastefulness. He argues that since Solomon had so many children, killing a child would matter as little as killing a cat. To Jim, who as a slave has nothing, Solomon’s wealth and prosperity have spoiled his good judgment. It’s no accident that Jim, when relating the story to Huck, uses a dollar bill in place of the child. This is a rich symbol from Twain, who seems to be suggesting that wealth, like too much of anything, poisons our ability to act properly. Also notice in Chapter 15 Huck’s developing consciousness of Jim as a human being. When they are finally through the fog, and Huck has played that cruel joke on Jim, Jim figures it out, and scolds Huck. Huck says it took him fifteen minutes for him to “humble himself to a nigger,” but he does it, and, more important, he doesn’t even feel bad about humbling himself later. Although he is a ways away from seeing Jim on his level, Huck here takes a step in the right direction. Chapters 16-17 Summary Searching for the Illinois town of Cairo, Huck begins to question his decision to help Jim free himself. Still viewing Jim as property, Huck feels extreme guilt for taking Miss Watson’s slave from her. Jim aggravates Huck even further by stating that if he can’t buy his wife and children out of slavery, he will steal them. Huck then decides to go ashore, and tell the people there that there is a runaway slave aboard his raft. But as he paddles away from the raft, Huck has a change of heart when he hears Jim call out that he is both his only friend and the only person to have ever kept a promise to him. Huck is then stopped by two men in another skiff who are searching for runaway slaves, and Huck lies about who is aboard the raft, telling them his family is inside the wigwam, sick with smallpox. This lie drives the men away. A few nights later, Huck and Jim realize that they most likely passed Cairo the night they were both separated by the fog. Near dawn, a steamboat bores down upon their raft, and they’re forced to jump overboard. Huck, unable to find Jim, swims for shore. Huck soon finds himself at the house of the Grangerford family, a paranoid but generous group who put Huck up for several days as their guest. Huck instantly befriends a boy his age named Buck. Chapters 16-17

Analysis Huck thoroughly explains his own guilt about Jim in Chapter 16. By assisting Jim to Cairo and to freedom, Huck is deeply bothered by what he calls his conscience. Although Huck claimed to dislike Miss Watson and the way she treated him, he now looks back at her nostalgically, fondly even, and his conscience wonders how he could allow himself to wrong Miss Watson by assisting a piece of her property go free. Huck is in a very tight spot for a fourteen-year-old boy. Certainly his own freedom has come at a price, but it is unclear whether Huck truly understands what it means to have to answer to no one. True, he knew the kind of enslavement that Pap put him through, but even so, Huck’s skin color has always guaranteed that he will be allowed a certain amount of freedom. All of this is actually just to show what a difficult task Twain has laid out for Huck. Not only will Huck have to go against his upbringing, but he’ll also have to deny his “conscience” if he is going to be able to see Jim in terms of his humanity. And all of Jim’s talk of breaking laws is only a sharper thorn in Huck’s side. Huck’s psychology is interesting here. It’s really only when Jim threatens to steal his family back that Huck finally feels that he now has the duty to turn Jim in. Huck himself has stolen many times before, but he does not want to equate the two. Luckily, Jim is increasingly aware of Huck as a person, or always has been, and he uses that guilt that Huck feels against him, calling out that Huck is the only white man who has ever kept his promise to Jim. Here again, we see Huck’s word and the value he places on friendship triumphing over even his guilty conscience. Chapters 18-19 Summary One day while Huck and Buck Grangerford are walking through the woods, they spy a young man named Harney Shepherdson on his horse. Buck attempts to shoot Harney, but misses. After running home, Buck tells Huck of a feud between the two aristocratic Grangerford and Shepherdson families. Although Buck isn’t sure who began the feud, he tells Huck that each family kills someone from the other family and then the killing is avenged by the other family and so on, until one day everyone will be dead. Later, Huck does a favor for Miss Sophia, Buck’s older sister, and fetches her bible from the church. By discovering a note hidden in the pages of the bible, he learns that Sophia is having an affair with one of the Shepherdson boys. Walking down by the river later that night, Huck is approached by one of the Grangerfords’ slaves, who takes him to where Jim has been hiding in the swamp. Jim tells Huck that he’s been busy mending the broken raft and acquiring supplies while Huck has been ashore. The next morning, Huck learns that Sophia has eloped with Harney Shepherdson, and that both families are in hot pursuit of the couple. Huck soon finds both families in a gun battle at the steamboat dock and slips unnoticed into a tree. Later that day, Buck is shot dead while fleeing in the river. Huck and Jim leave town that night in the newly repaired raft. A few days later, downriver, as Huck and Jim are docking the raft at daybreak in the woods, two men, who are fleeing from the shore, come aboard their raft. Huck and Jim guide the raft back out into the river

and set off. Although the two men are con artists and work together, they pretend, in front of Huck and Jim, to be complete strangers. The man in his thirties makes up a story that he is actually a duke, while the older man, wanting to top his partner, tells Huck and Jim that he is actually the Dauphin, an exiled king of France. Although Huck realizes almost right away that the two men are frauds, he and Jim bow to the men and treat them like royalty. Chapters 18-19 Analysis The scenes in which Huck lives with the Shepherdsons show Twain’s use of irony to satirize the Southern aristocracy. He does this in a subtle way: Huck, a country boy, is impressed with the wealth and breeding of the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords. He’s so impressed that he doesn’t bat an eye when Buck tells him about the absurd feud raging between the two families. This is both the beauty and the problem of Huck’s perception. He refuses to judge either family for their killing of one another because he is unfamiliar with their lifestyle. This perspective allows him to relate to things clearly and calmly, almost as if he were a reporter, rather than, say, condemn the two families for their vengeful killing of one another and fill the pages with his own opinion. We learn more this way. However, Twain wouldn’t want our interpretation of the scene to stop there. Let’s take a closer look at the feud. We have two families that engage in killing one another because it is a tradition passed down from their forefathers. Both families seem also not to believe in death. The feud with the opposing family is played out as if it were a kind of game, and although the stakes are high for both families, neither seems to place any importance on human life. Sorrow for a fallen family member is instantly turned to vengeance, and the game begins all over again. Twain hopes that we can see beyond Huck’s non-judgmental narration and view the feud for what it really is: an absurd, amoral, and immature game played by two wealthy families who seem to have nothing better to do. There’s an odd twist at the end of Chapter 18, where the author manipulates our feelings. Much of the feud has been related comically in the first few chapters. The two families almost feel like cartoon characters, because their actions seem so broad and unbelievable. Then comes the climactic shootout where Huck reveals that Buck has been shot, and that the memory of finding his body is so painful, he still dreams about it. The real horror and tragedy of the feud is brought home in this scene, and through Huck’s understatement, Twain is suddenly able to make us feel it. Chapters 20-21 Summary Almost instantly, the Duke and the Dauphin suspect Jim of being a runaway slave. Huck invents a good cover story, and the men are satisfied, suggesting that they now raft during the day instead of at night. The frauds quickly make themselves at home, taking over Huck and Jim’s sleeping spaces in the wigwam and making them keep watch outside.

The following day, the Duke and the Dauphin decide that their next con could be a performance of Shakespeare. Walking through the small town where they have stopped, the four men find all of the town’s residents at a revival meeting outside of town. The preacher there works the crowd into a frenzy, and the Dauphin takes advantage of this, inventing a tall tale that he is a reformed pirate who is now headed back to sea to convert the rest of the pirates. A collection box is started for the Dauphin, and he gathers 87 dollars from the crowd. When all four men later reconvene at the raft, the Duke reveals that he spent his afternoon printing posters for their Shakespeare performance, as well as a wanted sign for Jim. The Duke believes this sign will give them a way to raft during the daytime, as long as Jim is tied to the raft. If anyone asks, they will say they are returning Jim back to his plantation for the reward money. Later, the Duke practices Hamlet’s Soliloquy, which he humorously butchers. When they have floated down into Arkansas, they go ashore in another town and post fliers for their show. Huck closely observes the crowds in the street, and sees a man named Boggs ride into town, drunk, and begin cursing out a man named Colonel Sherburn at the top of his lungs. Sherburn warns Boggs that if he keeps cursing him, he will kill him. Boggs doesn’t listen, so Sherburn shoots him dead in the middle of the street. A gathering crowd decides that Boggs meant no harm and that Sherburn should be lynched. Chapters 20-21 Analysis The Duke and the Dauphin are a particularly hilarious pair of con artists, and it’s worth asking ourselves why their cons seem to work. Take the camp meeting, where the Dauphin seizes upon the energy and enthusiasm of the townspeople to make them believe a phony pirate story. The townspeople are so blinded by their religious fervor that they are unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is fake. And just as they would donate to the church, the townspeople donate to the Dauphin. Twain seems to be suggesting that there are definite comparisons to be drawn between religion and hoax. In this case, the townspeople’s will to do good for the church ironically goes to an evil cause instead. But this is not to say that religion is always a blinder. In fact, the Duke and the Dauphin, though at times comically inept, are, for the most part, a pair of brilliant and inventive cons that are almost impossible to resist. They are highly skilled at what they do. They decide exactly what the townspeople want, and then prey on this desire. For example, in the camp meeting, the Dauphin smartly realizes that in the midst of all the preaching, what the people want to see is actual evidence that the preaching has worked, so he gets on stage and crafts a foolproof conversion story. He also banks on the townspeople’s desire to appear generous in front of their peers, and has a collection taken up for himself. The reason the Duke and the Dauphin often win is because they, and not the townspeople, have actually thought out what their enemies want. And because the people react in the way the Duke and the Dauphin expect them to, they fall into the traps and are duped. Twain here is also satirizing not only religion, but also the people of the town, who, caught up in trying to appear decent to their fellow men, end up being made fools of.

Chapters 22-23 Summary Chapter 22 opens as a mob rushes to Sherburn’s house in order to lynch him. He is ready and waiting for them, however, and from his rooftop, delivers a powerful speech in which he exposes the fear and cowardice of the mob. After Sherburn points his rifle at the crowd, the mob disperses. Huck then attends the circus, and is particularly fascinated by a hoax in which a performer poses as a drunken fool wanting to ride a horse in the ring, and when given a chance, turns out to be a spectacular rider. That night, the Duke and the Dauphin perform Shakespeare to a sparse crowd. The next morning, the Duke creates fliers for a comedy show to which women and children are not admitted. They have a full house at their show that evening, which consists of a naked, painted Dauphin prancing on all fours on the stage. The crowd justifiably feels cheated, but doesn’t want to appear so to the rest of the town, so they decide to talk up the show to their fellow citizens. The show is packed right up until the third night, but Huck and the Duke realize that the third night crowd intends to break up the show and most likely lynch them, so they escape to the raft before the curtain rises. All four men flee on the raft under the cover of darkness, Huck, Jim, the Duke and the Dauphin with their 465 dollars in earnings. That night, Jim reveals to Huck that he is sick of having to travel with the Duke and the Dauphin, and they discuss the rotten ways of royalty. Jim also reveals a disturbing moment from his past when he struck his daughter after she refused to listen to him, only to realize that she was deaf. Chapters 22-23 Analysis In these chapters, Twain continues his assault on small-town values. Pay close attention to Sherburn’s speech to the crowd, because it casts a large thematic shadow over much of the rest of the novel. The vigilante justice that the crowd threatens is deeply appalling to both Twain and a character like Sherburn. The lynching that the crowd seeks to do is not heroic at all, insists Sherburn, because whatever courage the crowd has brought comes from the total mob and not from themselves. He argues that the mob is actually comprised of cowards who are in fear of being discovered. This is almost immediately confirmed at the Royal Nonesuch performance, when the first night’s crowd, scared of being thought of as fools, decides to make sure everyone in town sees the performance so that each man “is in the same boat.” This action, of course, only helps the Duke and the Dauphin, who are not afraid to appear stupid at all. The novel highly values individuals. What sets Huck, Jim, and even the Duke and the Dauphin apart is their individuality. Huck is a backwoods country boy out of step with polite society. Jim is a slave who breaks from traditional thinking about his own bondage, and tries to get free. The Duke and the Dauphin, in their many elaborate cons, stand apart from society only to take advantage of it. Even if we might disagree with some of their actions, Twain asks us to at

least see these characters as unique individuals who bow to very few rules. Much of the American identity is said to be based on this idea of individualism. To stand alone and apart is to be courageous and to think for oneself, avoiding the cowardice and ruthlessness of the mob. Chapters 24-25 Summary On the raft, Jim becomes worried that he will be discovered if the other three men keep leaving him alone while they go to town. The Duke then covers Jim in blue paint and dresses him in a wig and Shakespearean clothing. He then hangs a sign on Jim that reads, “sick Arab.” Worried that word might have traveled downriver about their last con, the Duke and the Dauphin decide to change course, so they put on their finest clothes and arrive in a new town on a steamboat, with Huck posing as their servant. At the dock they meet a young man who tells them of a wealthy man downriver who has just died. The Duke extracts as much information as he can from the young man, and learns that the wealthy man, named Peter Wilks, has two brothers, both of whom are about the same age as the Duke and the Dauphin. As they arrive in Wilks’ town, the Duke and the Dauphin decide to pose as Peter’s English brothers in the hopes of gaining some of the money Peter left behind. The town greets the three men warmly, and believes the two frauds to be Peter’s long lost brothers: Harvey, a preacher, and William, who is mentally retarded. The three men meet the three girls Peter cared for before he died--Mary Jane, Susan, and Joanna. Upon viewing Peter’s corpse, the Duke and the Dauphin further convince the crowd by acting grieved. After the Dauphin attempts to further ingratiate himself with the town by relating all of the information the young man gave him at the steamboat dock, he reads a letter left behind by the deceased. It states that Harvey and William should inherit three thousand dollars and that the girls should inherit an additional three thousand dollars. Furthermore, the letter explains where the six thousand dollars is hidden in the cellar. When the Duke, the Dauphin, and Huck go into the cellar to retrieve the money, they discover that the bag of loot is 415 dollars short. After some worrying, they decide to make up the difference. Then in order to win over the crowd, they count the money in front of everyone and give their share to the girls. They exit the cellar, count the money and, after a moving speech, hand it over to the girls. The crowd is moved to tears. But then, the town doctor, suspicious of their phony accents, accuses the Duke and the Dauphin of being frauds. He begs the three sisters not to trust them. Mary Jane, well-intentioned but fooled, hands the money to the Dauphin and says, “Take this six thousand dollars, and invest it for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don’t give us no receipt for it.” Chapters 24-25 Analysis Definitely some of the funniest chapters in the novel, chapters 24 and 25 offer a good

chance to pay attention to Huck’s evolving consciousness. In order to leave Jim, without having any problems for themselves, the Duke and the Dauphin paint him blue, make him wear a bonnet, and hang the “Sick Arab” sign on him. Although this episode is played for laughs, Huck tells us that Jim looked looks like a drowned man and that Jim was the most horrible “looking outrage” that Huck has ever seen. Huck, although he doesn’t consciously seem to realize this when speaking to us, is again becoming more aware of Jim as a human being. Had this moment happened earlier in the voyage, there’s a good chance Huck would have thought the disguise was funny, that Jim only existed as a means for entertaining him. But now Huck has gone so far as to call the disguise an outrage, which tells us that not only can he see Jim as a human being, but he also feels that Jim is entitled to being treated with respect. And later, with the Duke and the Dauphin fooling the crowd, Huck tells us that their phony grieving and the town’s gullibility make him “ashamed of the human race.” The whole scene disgusts Huck, and this is precisely what makes his position so difficult. The Duke and the Dauphin are cons and liars, and Huck dislikes this. On the other hand, he sees the townspeople as no better because of their urge to believe anything. And there is Huck, stuck in the middle of the whole false show, pretending to be the Dauphin’s servant. What saves Huck from truly hating people, it seems, is Mary Jane and her innocence. Although Huck may be disgusted with a great percentage of the human race, he feels that there are certain people who deserve his help. Chapters 26-27 Summary After dinner that evening, the Duke and the Dauphin are given the sisters’ bedroom to sleep in. Joanna, the youngest of the sisters, questions Huck about England. Huck does his best at talking about something he knows nothing about, but Joanna’s logic is excellent, and Huck is finally saved by Susan, who scolds Joanna for treating their guest rudely. Huck begins to feel badly about the fact that the Duke and the Dauphin are robbing these women of their rightful inheritance, and he searches the Duke and the Dauphin’s rooms. When the men enter unexpectedly, Huck hides in a closet. The Duke argues that they should leave that very night, while the Dauphin argues that if they leave, they will miss out on the earnings to be made when Peter’s property is sold off. This convinces the Duke, and then, narrowly avoiding their finding him in the closet, Huck learns that the gold is stashed in a hole in the bed. As soon as the men leave, Huck steals the gold, and takes it with him to his sleeping cubby and waits. Later in the night, when Huck is certain the entire house is sleeping, Huck hides the bag of money in Peter’s coffin, intending to reveal its location to Mary Jane by letter after he and the Duke and the Dauphin are long gone. Two days after the funeral and the burial, the Dauphin sells Peter’s slaves to several traders, breaking up a family, which comes as a shock to the sisters. The next morning, the Duke and the Dauphin talk privately with Huck and reveal that someone has stolen the gold. They ask Huck if he saw anything, and, thinking they are all out of trouble, Huck blames it on the slaves that were sold and taken the day before, saying he saw them tiptoeing out of the Dauphin’s room. Huck is relieved that the slaves aren’t around to face the wrath of the Duke and the Dauphin.

Chapters 26-27 Analysis We should think about this novel in terms of the conflict between appearances and reality. Recall the episode in Chapter 23 when Jim revealed to Huck that he was capable of violence toward his deaf daughter. We generally think of Jim as a kind, smart person, but Twain includes these dark little details about each character that make him or her more complex. Take Miss Watson, for example, who on one hand is incredibly kind to Huck but on the other treats Jim with cruelty. Or consider Tom Sawyer, whose outward personality is friendly and whose inner personality is full of mischief and guile. Twain continues this trend in Chapter 27, in the scene in which the Duke and the Dauphin sell the deceased Harvey’s slaves without a second thought. Let’s think about how we perceive the Duke and the Dauphin for a moment. They are charming, witty, bumbling, arrogant, and hilarious. Their ability to make us laugh stems from both the brilliance of their low-tech schemes and also their bottomless tolerance for shame. The Duke doesn’t mind crawling naked on all fours on stage, and the Dauphin has no problem brutalizing Shakespeare in front of an audience. And their mistaken identity fraud with the Wilks family proves their most audacious and hilarious act yet. But Twain won’t let us off that easily. We as readers just aren’t able to laugh guilt-free at the Duke and the Dauphin, because if we do, we miss their moments of outright cruelty. The scene in which they sell off the Wilks’ slaves is an unusually cruel move by the Duke and the Dauphin. It even angers members of the town, as well as Huck, who deem it morally wrong to separate a family of slaves. And what do they do it for? The Duke and the Dauphin do everything for money, and all moral considerations take a backseat to this. At the end of the day, they have no conscience. They will separate families; they will rob three young children of their inheritance. It’s in these moments when we should be questioning our laughter. How can we laugh when the Duke and the Dauphin are clearly so heartless? Perhaps Twain wanted us to recognize here our own difficulty in deciding what is funny and what is just cruel. Chapters 28-29 Summary When Huck discovers Mary Jane grieving over the slave family, his emotions get the better of him, and he reveals the true identities of the Duke and the Dauphin to the girl. Because Jim's safety is at stake, Huck asks Mary Jane to keep the information secret and to wait at a neighbor’s house for the evening in order to give them time to flee. He hands Mary Jane a note that reveals the location of the money, and tells her that he will never forget her. After Mary Jane departs, Huck runs into Joanna and Susan, who want to know where their sister has gone. Huck thinks quickly, and feeds them an excuse that a neighbor is sick with a new kind of mumps.

Peter Wilks’ property is auctioned off later that day, but the proceedings are interrupted by the arrival of another steamboat and two men claiming to be the rightful heirs of Peter’s true brothers. The two strangers have had their baggage misplaced, and they promise that in two days time, when it is returned to them, that they will have proof of their identities. The Duke and the Dauphin begin to lose support among a few people in the crowd, and the newly arrived lawyer, Levi Bell, accuses the Duke and the Dauphin of being frauds because he saw them in the canoe upriver. Later, at the hotel tavern, Levi Bell holds an impromptu trial in which both sets of men must attempt to prove their identities. Using the deceased Peter Wilks’ letters as a template, Bell asks that each set of men try to write a sentence on a piece of paper. The Duke and the Dauphin fail miserably, but during the second test, in which each group must name the tattoo the deceased had on his chest, the Dauphin brilliantly states that Peter had a small, thin blue arrow on his breast that is nearly impossible to see. The mob brings both sets of men out to the graveyard to examine the corpse, and when it is exhumed, they find the bag of gold within the coffin. Huck, seizing the distraction, bolts from the crowd and down to the river, where he and Jim light out downriver. A few minutes later, the Duke and the Dauphin catch up with them in a canoe and board the raft. Chapters 28-29 Analysis Huck really comes into his own as a master planner in these chapters. He talks us through a particularly difficult plan that will allow Mary Jane and her sisters to keep their rightful money, allow Huck and Jim to escape the town unnoticed, and have the Duke and the Dauphin jailed. When he’s told his plan to Mary Jane, he still refuses to give himself much credit, saying again that if Tom Sawyer had done it, he could have thrown “a bit more style into it.” He should give himself more credit; if Tom Sawyer were planning the escape, he wouldn’t take the care and calculation that Huck does to ensure that the good are rewarded and the bad are punished. Huck is the moral one in his planning, which we will see more of later in the novel. Although it only plays a minor role, Huck’s relationship with Mary Jane is worth looking at. He’s definitely attracted to both her looks and her virtue, but by the chapter’s end, he, as if he were a kind of chivalrous knight in the books he and Tom Sawyer often read, takes on the role of her savior, and relishes it. He thinks the world of Mary Jane, but he still sees her as someone who can’t stand on her own. When he says goodbye to her, he takes on an almost fatherly tone, playfully scolding her when she stalls before setting the plan in motion. This episode of engaging with the opposite sex is a minor but important development in Huck’s maturation. Chapters 30-31 Summary

The Duke and the Dauphin are furious with Huck for leaving them on shore in that hostile situation, but then they quickly turn against one another because each suspects the other of stealing the money. Eventually, they reconcile and fall asleep. After many days, the raft makes it all the way to Louisiana, and the Duke and the Dauphin go ashore again to practice their many cons. One morning, the Dauphin goes ashore alone, telling the others to fetch him later. When the Duke and Huck find him drunk in a tavern, the two frauds fight, and Huck flees back to the raft. Jim, however, is nowhere in sight, and Huck learns from a boy that the Dauphin ratted Jim out and sold the rights to claim the reward money on the runaway slave for 40 dollars. Huck also learns that Jim is being held captive at the Phelps plantation, several miles away. He becomes extraordinarily conflicted about what his next action should be. He considers sending a letter to Miss Watson, notifying her of Jim’s location, but then fears that she might end up selling the slave. Also, Huck would face great shame when word got out that he had helped a slave escape. Huck attempts to pray to God for forgiveness. Then, he tries to write the letter, but finds himself bothered by good memories of Jim. Ultimately, he decides that Jim is his only friend, and tearing up the letter, he decides to “go to hell” by helping to free the slave. He paddles out to the Phelps’ place, and on the way to the house, he meets the Duke, who is posting new fliers for a show. Huck tricks the Duke into believing that he doesn’t know where Jim is being held. After the Duke nearly reveals to Huck Jim’s true location, he catches himself and feeds the boy false information, telling him that Jim is being held 40 miles away at the home of a man named Abram G. Foster. Huck heads in the direction of the Foster home, then, once he is out of the Duke’s sight, doubles back and hurries toward the Phelps plantation. Chapters 30-31 Analysis The moments when Huck wrestles with his conscience about whether or not to inform Miss Watson about Jim’s whereabouts are some of the most moving passages in the novel. Huck begins this argument with himself by condemning the Dauphin for selling Jim back into lifelong slavery “for forty dirty dollars.” But then he misdiagnoses why he’s so angry, telling himself that the real reason the Dauphin made a mistake is because he sold Jim to strangers. Then he tells himself that Jim would be happier being a slave back home with Miss Watson, where he would be around family, but Huck soon realizes that she would actually be furious with Jim and would try and sell him down the river again. He backs this up with the thought that he himself would be in huge trouble for helping a slave to freedom. But notice then how he takes on the religious thinking of Miss Watson, worrying that Providence is looking at him and judging him for his sin of helping Jim. His conscience then assumes the voice of Miss Watson, and tells him he’ll burn in Hell for helping Jim. Huck tries to pray, but realizes that he isn’t fully ready to give up being wicked, so the prayer does no good. Then he writes a letter to Miss Watson, which makes him feel better. He tries to pray again, but before he can do that, he begins to think of Jim as a human being and of their friendship, and recognizes the bond they share. In Huck’s mind, then, he must choose between the letter and the bond with Jim. To Huck, the difference between the two is practically one of life and death. To

write the letter is to enter into society again, opening up communication with a group of people he sought long ago to disappear from. In his Aunt’s mind, and in the mind of a proslavery society, sending the letter is the right thing to do. Silence, in Huck’s mind, will earn him everlasting damnation. So Huck bravely tears up the letter, believing he has given up his soul, and vows to devote his life to wickedness. The irony, of course, is that Huck’s idea of wickedness is most likely our idea of virtue, so we admire him all the more for his decision. Chapters 32-33 Summary Huck arrives at the Phelps farm, and decides to trust Providence to give him the right words when the time comes. He’s greeted by a woman who refers to him as Tom, and who orders Huck, before he can argue any other way, to call her Aunt Sally. She has been expecting Tom for several days, and asks him where his baggage is. Huck takes his new disguise in stride, telling Aunt Sally that he hid his baggage back in town because he wanted to walk around a bit. Just as Huck is about to be discovered, Mr. Phelps arrives home from looking for Tom in town. Playing a joke on her husband, Aunt Sally tells Huck to hide under the bed. Aunt Sally, joking with her husband, tells him she hasn’t seen Tom Sawyer anywhere, thus revealing to Huck just who he is supposed to be. Huck is familiar with Tom and all his family, and is able to sell his story that much more convincingly to the Phelpses. Huck drives a wagon back to town to retrieve his imaginary baggage, and on the way, passes the real Tom Sawyer, who gives him his bag and tells him to go back to the farm. Huck reveals to Tom that Jim is being held captive, and Tom, much to Huck’s surprise, agrees to help Huck free Jim and aid in his escape. As Huck and the Phelpses are sitting down to dinner, Tom Sawyer arrives, playing an elaborate prank in which he reveals that he is actually Sid Sawyer, his little brother. Tom and Huck ask if they can attend the Duke and the Dauphin’s show later that night, and Mr. Phelps tells them that there won’t be one, because Jim revealed that both of them were frauds. Tom and Huck sneak out later that night to warn the Duke and the Dauphin, but are too late; on the road they meet a crowd headed the other way, carrying a tarred and feathered Duke and Dauphin. Even though they have abused Huck in the past, Huck can’t help but feel sorry for the two criminals. Chapters 32-33 Analysis Huck seems to have arrived at a newfound confidence in storytelling by the time he walks up to Aunt Sally’s home. He states that he realized, walking to the front door with no concrete plan of what to say, that “Providence always did put the right words” in his mouth if he “left it alone.” Throughout the novel, Huck has invented stories in order to ensure either his or Jim’s secrecy and safety. Even in the previous chapter he invented another tale to throw the Dauphin off his trail, so he could attempt to free Jim. All these

lies that Huck tells, even though he’d probably think they were wicked, go toward a bigger truth, or greater good, which is the eventual freedom of Jim. This does bring up the issue of whether a lie is more worthy when it is told for a greater purpose. Or whether a truth is spoiled by the many lies it has taken to arrive at it. Either way, Huck’s newfound faith in Providence can also be thought of as a newfound faith and confidence in himself. Although he’s too humble to gloat about his fantastic ability to think on his feet, his self-confidence while walking up to Aunt Sally’s house shows a changed Huck from the boy we met at the beginning of the novel, who, back then, seemed to rely entirely on Tom Sawyer for his feeling of self-confidence. Huck’s assuming Tom Sawyer’s name and identity is an important symbolic transformation. For one, the novel has come full circle. By sheer coincidence, Tom Sawyer, Huck’s friend who appeared only at the beginning of the novel, is featured again at the close, first in name and then in person. We can’t ignore the fact that Huck must, for a while, assume the identity of the best friend whom he worships. Does it suggest that Huck has finally arrived at the same level of intelligence and imagination as Tom, and is therefore worthy of being compared to him? Or does it signal a kind regression of Huck’s own personality and a return of the childish personality we saw at the beginning of the novel? The novel gives no easy answers to these questions, but keep them in mind as we read into the final chapters. Chapters 34-36 Summary One day, Tom tells Huck that he is sure that Jim is being kept captive in a hut near the forest. Huck suggests that they steal the key from the slave that brings Jim his meals and float away down the river with Jim. But Tom, influenced by too many adventure stories, believes that Huck’s method would be too easy, so the boys set out to devise something more complicated. The next morning, they befriend the slave who brings Jim his meals, and the slave takes them to the hut where Jim is kept chained to the leg of his bed. Jim is overjoyed to see both Huck and Tom, and calls out their real names. The slave catches on, but Tom is able to shame him into blaming what he heard on witches. The slave then wonders aloud whether or not Mr. Phelps will hang Jim for running away, but Tom reassures Jim that they will have him free soon. The next morning, Huck and Tom discuss methods of freeing Jim, and Tom shoots down every one of Huck’s suggestions if they don’t risk either their lives or Jim’s life. Their plan involves making things like a rope ladder and pens and sheets and giving them to Jim, even though Jim has no use for them. Ultimately the boys decide that even if they aren’t able to include all their ridiculous elements in the jailbreak, they should pretend that they did. The boys begin digging a hole between the shed and the hut, and when finished, they wake Jim and tell him about their plans. Jim, bewildered at Tom Sawyer’s insistence on making his escape complicated, agrees to go along with it.

Chapters 34-36 Analysis Huck remains consistently humble throughout the novel. Especially when joined by Tom Sawyer at the Phelps farm, Huck wants only the best for Tom, and doesn’t want Tom to ruin his reputation by helping him steal a slave. There’s a very telling passage in the middle of Chapter 34, when Huck lists all the reasons why he can't understand why Tom would want to tear down his own reputation by helping Jim. For Huck’s part, he considers himself so far removed from familial or societal relations that he feels that he has nothing to lose. Huck “going to hell” by helping Jim won’t have such catastrophic results. Although his concern is certainly endearing, this might also be a clue to another side of Huck: one that takes a certain pleasure in his own outsider status. He imagines himself as a kind of martyr here, too far gone to do any more good, and too mean to ever be loved again by society. On one hand, Huck is being completely self-deprecating and humble, but at the same time, Huck’s suffering, that he has willfully taken on, might actually bring him a small amount of pride. After all, it sets him apart from just about everyone else, and makes him an individual. Although Huck again shows his own individuality, his morality does begin to slip with the arrival of Tom Sawyer. Remember that in the beginning of the novel, Tom and Huck made believe that they were a band of robbers, and although they broke up a Sunday school picnic, they never really did interact much with society. The consequences of their make-believe gang were almost none. On the Phelps farm, the stakes are much higher. Jim is imprisoned, and every day draws closer to the time when he will be returned to Miss Watson. Although Huck protests, Tom insists that they formulate a plan based on what they’ve read in books, instead of one that will release Jim safely and quickly. The fact that Huck ultimately complies with Tom shows that even if he has developed in terms of his character, while in the presence of Tom, this character takes a back seat to his friend's domineering personality. Chapters 37-39 Summary Upset about losing all the household objects that Tom and Huck have stolen for Jim, Aunt Sally concludes that rats must be responsible. However, once Tom and Huck stop up all the rat holes, they continue to steal, and nearly drive the woman crazy. Then they bake Jim’s rope ladder into a pie, and make pens with which he can write his prison memoirs. The boys then decide that Jim needs a rock to carve messages on, so they roll a grindstone toward the hut. It’s too heavy for them, so they break Jim out of the hut and enlist his help to roll it inside. The boys then collect spiders, snakes, rats, and insects, and dump them into Jim’s hut, to make it more exciting for him. After three weeks go by, Mr. Phelps announces that he will place ads in the New Orleans and St. Louis papers to see if anyone is missing a slave. Both Tom and Huck sense that they must move quickly, but Tom devises that, to make the escape more difficult, they will write an

anonymous note to the Phelpses, and tell them that trouble is coming. Huck objects, but still goes along with the plan, which also includes Huck dressing in a slave girl’s clothes to deliver the letter, as well as Jim wearing, on the night of his escape, one of Aunt Sally’s dresses. The next day Huck leaves the threatening note, and by night all of the family is afraid. The Phelpses order the doors to the house to be guarded, but slipping out the upstairs window, Tom slips a second letter into the sleeping guard’s shirt. The note, addressed from an “unknown friend,” states that the following night a gang of bloodthirsty Indians will attempt to steal Jim from the Phelpses, but the note writer promises to betray his gang and “baa” like a sheep when the Indians are close. Chapters 37-39 Analysis The contrast between Tom Sawyer and Huck could not be more striking. Huck is pragmatic and sensitive, but ultimately cowardly, while Tom is tyrannical, cruel, and self-serving. Now, if we read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an adventure book, we read the scenes with Tom and Huck, and enjoy them in terms of the boys’ imagination and humor. But if we read the novel with an eye toward the relationship between Jim and Huck, these last chapters are incredibly upsetting. We’ve watched Huck develop as a sensitive human being over the course of the novel, gradually coming to recognize Jim’s humanity until he even stakes his soul on it. Then Tom shows up, and Huck’s sensitivity all but disappears. Sure, he fights here and there for Jim’s quick rescue, but he never challenges Tom’s authority on the matter. What Huck can’t seem to get through his head is that Tom, in his arrogance and selfish desire to stage a legendary rescue, is actually risking Jim’s life. By the middle of their plan, there is already a rumor that Jim might be hanged. And even if his life is not at stake, Jim’s humanity is. The Phelpses keep Jim in solitary confinement, degrading him as a human being. Tom and Huck certainly don’t realize this, and they even decide to make the situation harder on Jim. They infest his room with rodents and insects, and even make him write messages in his own blood. Huck goes along with all of this, and we should wonder why. Chapters 40-41 Summary The following night, after the boys have been told to go to bed early, Tom tells Huck to go down to the cellar to retrieve some butter to use in the getaway. Coming up from the cellar, Aunt Sally catches Huck, and he hides the butter in his hat. She orders him up to the sitting room, where he finds fifteen armed farmers waiting for the Indians. Aunt Sally questions Huck, and he becomes so nervous and sweaty that a streak of butter slides down his face. Thinking he has brain fever, Aunt Sally takes off his hat, and the bread and butter come tumbling out. Aunt Sally is immediately relieved and sends Huck to bed. He is out the window in no time. He meets Tom and Jim in the hut. The farmers come through the door of the hut, and Tom, Huck, and Jim slip out the hole they have dug to

the shed. They slip out of the shed and into the woods, but Tom catches his pants on the fence, which makes a noise, and then the farmers start shooting. The three men reach the canoe and paddle out to the raft, which they have hidden on a nearby island. Tom has been shot in the leg, and so they must wait on the island while Huck goes and fetches a doctor. Huck sends a doctor to Tom in the canoe (it only holds one person), and then lies down in the woods for a nap. The next day, Huck runs into Mr. Phelps who takes him back to the plantation. When they return home, Huck finds that the house is full of people from town talking about how crazy Jim must have been to keep all the strange objects in the hut. By ten in the evening, Tom still isn’t back, and Aunt Sally strictly forbids Huck from going out and looking for him. Chapters 40-41 Analysis Jim seems to have lost some of his intelligence and influence. Part of what is so frustrating about these final scenes is that Jim, who, in previous chapters was able to brilliantly guilt Huck into doing his will, goes along with the entire plan, assuming that Tom and Huck know best. He lets the two boys make a fool of him. If there can be said to be any sort of villain in these final chapters, it is Tom, because he seems all-powerful and able to get Jim and Huck to do whatever he wants. He might be charming, but he is hugely irresponsible with both Huck and Jim. It might definitely be argued that Jim has spent so long in solitary confinement that he has reverted back to his old sense of inferiority toward whites. But even if that were true, there is no getting around the scene in which Huck and Tom actually free Jim to help them with moving the grindstone, only to put him back into captivity later that night. And later, Jim sacrifices his freedom so that Tom can get medical attention for his leg. Remember, this is the same Jim who, only days before, bravely challenged Huck’s views on King Solomon. Huck noted then that he knew all along that “Jim was white on the inside,” and it’s evident both how far he and Jim have sunk in terms of coming into their own personalities. Critics have long wondered how to interpret these last chapters. Are we supposed to be amused at Tom and Huck and Jim’s antics, and therefore turn a blind eye to just how stereotypical they have become, or are we supposed to be horrified by everyone’s actions, and read the ending as a cynical take on human nature? Reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a modern reader, it’s hard not to read the ending as cynical. Chapters 42-Chapter the Last Summary The next morning, Aunt Sally and Mr. Phelps are about to read the letter from Tom Sawyer’s mother, when suddenly they see a crowd coming toward the house. Tom is being carried in a stretcher with the doctor by his side, as well as Jim, in one of Aunt Sally’s dresses, in chains. The doctor pleads a case for Jim’s fair treatment, because on the boat, he realized that he could not remove the bullet in Tom’s leg without help. Jim,

of his own accord, came out of his hiding place to assist the doctor, and remained with Tom until he was captured later in the day. While Tom is recovering from his wound and Huck is by his bedside, Tom wakes up just as Aunt Sally walks in and he spills the beans about the entire plot to set Jim free. Tom is also surprised that Jim has been captured, and then reveals something that shocks both Aunt Sally and Huck: Miss Watson, Jim’s owner in Hannibal, died two months earlier, and set Jim free in her will. Just then, Aunt Polly, Tom’s mother, arrives and reveals the actual identities of Huck and Tom, and also verifies that Jim is indeed a free man. Aunt Polly has come down to see what her son is up to because in the letters from Aunt Sally, she kept mentioning that Sid was there, which couldn’t have been true. Later, Tom reveals why he wanted to free an already free slave, and he states that he wanted to float Jim all the way to the mouth of the river and then tell Jim he was free. Then he planned to book a steamboat, and tell everyone along the way up the river that Jim was coming, so he could return in style. After Jim is freed and is cared for, Tom gives Jim 40 dollars for his trouble. Tom also reveals that Huck’s 6000 dollars is still in the care of Judge Thatcher. Huck worries about his father still being able to get the money, and then Jim reveals that the man they saw murdered in that house on Jackson’s Island was actually Pap, so Huck doesn’t have to worry about him anymore. Huck ends his tale by planning to escape the house and leave Louisiana to have more adventures because his Aunt Sally is threatening to adopt and civilize him. He says that if he knew what trouble it was to write a book in the first place, he never would have done it. Chapters 42-Chapter the Last Analysis Tom Sawyer's revelation that Jim is actually free should be the nail in the coffin for what we think of him. Not only did he torture Jim and risk Jim being hanged, he also risked Jim being shot and subsequently lynched when he was captured again. All this, when all it would have taken was his word that Jim had already been freed by Miss Watson in her will. Even Huck is baffled by Tom’s recklessness, and he demands an explanation. Aside from the “adventure of it,” Tom reveals that what he really wanted to do was come up the river in a steamboat with Jim and Huck like heroes. While this is certainly a charming idea, it is completely ridiculous, and should it have happened, Jim could have easily been caught on his way down to the mouth of the river. We realize, with Tom's revelation, that Jim was probably better off being captured by the Phelpses the second time rather than risking more nights down the river with Huck and Tom. Also interesting is Jim's final revelation to Huck, that the man they saw in the flooded house way back in the beginning of the novel was actually Huck’s father. At first, this feels like a completely anticlimactic way to end the novel, but in a symbolic way, it makes sense. Huck’s goal all along has been his own freedom, and the two people standing in his way were, in the beginning of the novel, Pap and Miss Watson. With Miss Watson dead, this final revelation of Pap’s death severs Huck from his old life and grants him his true freedom. The irony is, though, by the time Huck is finishing writing his book, Aunt Sally and Mr. Phelps have threatened to adopt him. Huck decides to leave

their care, because he’s “been there before.” And by the end of the novel, with his tale all told, he is really free. He longer has to answer to any person, and he doesn’t have to wrestle anymore with writing his book. He simply signs his name to his memoir and is gone. Conclusion By the end of the novel, Jim is free, Pap is dead, and Huck has returned to the captivity of society. Twain doesn’t tell us what the future holds for Huck, and we can only guess. We do know that the only thing that makes Huck happy is the freedom to do as he pleases. He will always be lonely in the world simply because he thinks differently from his fellow man. But to Huckleberry Finn, loneliness is bearable. And in the end, it is this loneliness that will always keep him moving and always keep him on a path toward more adventures.