The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

AUTHOR BIOFull Name: Samuel Clemens

Pen Name: Mark Twain

Date of Birth: November 30, 1835

Place of Birth: Florida, Missouri

Date of Death: April 21, 1910

Brief Life Story: Mark Twain grew up in Missouri, which was a slave stateduring his childhood. He would later incorporate his formative experiences ofthe institution of slavery into his writings. As a teenager, Twain worked as aprinter’s apprentice and later as a typesetter, during which time he alsobecame a contributor of articles and humorous sketches to his brother Orion’snewspaper. On a voyage to New Orleans, Twain decided to become asteamboat pilot. Unsurprisingly, the Mississippi River is an important setting inmuch of Twain’s work. Twain also spent much of his life travelling across theUnited States, and he wrote many books about his own adventures, but he isbest known for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel,Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), having written in the latter what isconsidered to be the Great American Novel. Twain died of a heart attack in1910.

KEY FACTSFull Title: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Genre: Children’s novel / satirical novel

Setting: On and around the Mississippi River in the American South

Climax: Jim is sold back into bondage by the duke and king

Protagonist: Huck Finn

Antagonist: Pap, the duke and king, society in general

Point of View: First person limited, from Huck Finn’s perspective

HISTORICAL AND LITERARY CONTEXTWhen Written: 1876–1884

Where Written: Hartford, Connecticut, and Quarry Farm, located in Elmira,New York

When Published: 1884 in England; 1885 in the United States of America

Literary Period: Social realism (Reconstruction Era in United States)

Related Literary Works: The great precursor to Adventures of Huckleberry Finnis Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Both books are picaresque novels. Thatis, both are episodic in form, and both satirically enact social critiques. Also,both books are rooted in the tradition of realism; just as Don Quixote apes theheroes of chivalric romances, so does Tom Sawyer ape the heroes of theromances he reads, though the books of which these characters are partaltogether subvert the romance tradition. It could also be said that with itsrealism and local color, Huckleberry Finn is a challenge to romantic epics likeHerman Melville’s Moby-Dick, which Huck might dismiss as impractical.Compare also Harriet Beecher Sotwe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel that alsotreats the injustices and cruelty of American slavery but which, unlikeHuckleberry Finn, might be considered less a literary and more a propagandisticachievement.

Related Historical Events: Twain began writing the novel in theReconstruction Era, after the Civil War had ended in 1865 and slavery wasabolished in the United States. But even though slavery was abolished, thewhite majority nonetheless systematically oppressed the black minority, aswith the Jim Crow Laws of 1876, which institutionalized racial segregation.

Mark Twain, a stalwart abolitionist and advocate for emancipation, seems tobe critiquing the racial segregation and oppression of his day by exploring thetheme of slavery in Huckleberry Finn. Also significant to the novel is the SecondGreat Awakening, a religious revival that occurred in the Unties States fromthe late eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. Twain was criticalof religious revivalism on the grounds that Christians didn’t necessarily actmorally and were so zealous as to be easily fooled, a critique articulated inHuckleberry Finn.

EXTRA CREDITDialect. Mark Twain composed Huckleberry using not a high literary style butlocal dialects that he took great pains to reproduce with his idiosyncraticspelling and grammar.

Reception. A very important 20th-century novelist, Ernest Hemingway,considered Huckleberry Finn to be the best and most influential Americannovel ever written.

Huckleberry Finn introduces himself as a character from the book prequel tohis own, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He explains that at the end of that book,he and his friend Tom Sawyer discovered a robber’s cache of gold andconsequently became rich, but that now Huck lives with a good butmechanical woman, the Widow Douglas, and her holier-than-thou sister, MissWatson.

Huck resents the “sivilized” lifestyle that the widow imposes on him. However,Huck stays with the Widow and Miss Watson because Tom tells him that, ifHuck doesn’t stick with his life in straight-laced civilization, he can’t join Tom’sgang. So Huck does as the Widow tells him and gets to play robbers with Tomand other boys once in a while.

Even as Huck grows to enjoy his lifestyle with the Widow, his debauchedfather Pap menacingly reappears one night in his room. Pap rebukes Huck fortrying to better his life and demands that Huck give him the fortune he madeafter discovering the robber’s gold. Huck goes about business as usual as theWidow and a local judge, Judge Thatcher, try to get custody of him so that hedoesn’t fall into his father’s incapable and cruel hands. However, the two fail intheir custody battle, and an infuriated Pap decides to kidnap his son and draghim across the Mississippi River to an isolated cabin.

Huck is locked up like a prisoner in the cabin, and he is at the mercy of Pap’sdrunken, murderous rages, suffering many beatings from the old man. Huckresolves to escape from Pap once and for all. After some preparation, he fakeshis own death. Afterwards, Huck canoes to a place called Jackson’s Island,where he finds a man he knows from home, a slave named Jim who has runaway from his owner, Miss Watson, because he had overheard that sheplanned to sell him.

Having found a raft during a storm, Huck and Jim happily inhabit Jackson’sIsland, fishing, lazing, and even investigating a house floating down the riverthat contained a dead body. However, during trip into town while disguised asa girl to gather information, Huck learns that slave-hunters are out to captureJim for a reward. He and Jim quit the island on their raft, with the free statesas their destination.

A few days in, a fog descends on the river such that Huck and Jim miss theirroute to the free states. In the aftermath of this fog, Huck struggles with thecommand of his conscience to turn Jim in and the cry of his heart to aid Jim inhis bid for freedom. At last, Huck has his chance to turn Jim in, but he declinesto do so. The night after, a steamboat ploughs into Huck and Jim’s raft,separating the two.

Huck washes up in front of the house of an aristocratic family, theGrangerfords, which takes Huck into its hospitality. But the Grangerfords are

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engaged in an absurdly pointless and devastating feud with a rival family, theShepherdsons. When a Grangerford girl elopes with a Shepherdson boy, thefeud escalates to mad bloodshed. Huck, having learned that Jim is in hidingnearby with the repaired raft, barely escapes from the carnage. He and Jimboard the raft and continue to drift downriver.

A few days pass before Huck and Jim find two con men on the run. Huck helpsthe men escape their pursuers and he and Jim host them on the raft, whereone of the con men claims to be a duke and the other a king. The duke and kingtake advantage of Huck and Jim’s hospitality, taking over their raft as theyhead downriver, all the while conducting scams on shore.

One day, the king learns that a man nearby, Peter Wilks, has died, and that hisbrothers are expected to arrive. Hoping to collect the man’s inheritance, theduke and king go to his house claiming to be his dear brothers. Though theyingratiate themselves with most of the townspeople, especially Peter’sdaughters, the duke and king are suspected by some of being frauds. Huckcomes to feel so bad for Peter’s daughters, though, that he resolves to exposethe con men for what they are. As he puts his plan into effect, Peter’s realbrothers arrive, and, after the townspeople investigate, the duke and king areexposed. Huck escapes onto the raft with Jim, but despairs when the duke andking manage to do the same.

Desperate for money, the duke and king sell Jim to a local farmer, Silas Phelps,claiming that Jim is a runaway and that there is a reward on his head. The dukebetrays to Huck that Jim is being held at the Phelps farm. After some soul-searching, Huck decides that he would rather save Jim and go to hell than tolet his friend be returned to bondage.

Huck arrives at the Phelps farm where he meets Aunt Sally, whom Huck tricksinto thinking that Huck is a family member she was expecting, named Tom.Soon, though, Huck learns that Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally are none other thanTom Sawyer’s relatives. Indeed, Tom is the family member Aunt Sally wasexpecting all along. Huck intercepts Tom as he rides up to the Phelps farm, andTom not only agrees to help Huck keep his cover by impersonating his cousinSid, but he also agrees to help Huck in helping Jim escape from captivity.

Tom confabulates an impractical, romantic plan to free Jim, which Huck andJim reluctantly go along with. One night, Jim, Huck, and Tom make a successfulbreak for the Mississippi River, only to learn, however, that Tom was shot inthe leg by one of their pursuers. Jim sacrifices his freedom to wait with Tomwhile Huck fetches a doctor, who, after treating Tom with Jim’s help, insists onbringing Jim back to the Phelps farm, bound. He also presents Tom to thePhelpses wounded but alive.

After he recovers, Tom reveals to an anxious Aunt Sally and Huck that MissWatson wrote in her will that Jim was to be freed after her death and that shehad died two months earlier. Tom wanted to liberate Jim for the sake of self-indulgent adventure.

After things are straightened out, Jim reveals to Huck that Pap is dead; his wasthe corpse that Jim discovered in the floating house. Huck also learns that hestill has six thousand dollars in Judge Thatcher’s safekeeping and is free to dowhat he wants. Fearful of being adopted by Aunt Sally and “sivilized” again,Huck decides that he is going to go West.

Huckleberry FinnHuckleberry Finn – The boy-narrator of the novel, Huck is the son of a vicioustown drunk who has been adopted into normal society by the WidowDouglass after the events of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In his love forfreedom, Huck rebels both against his father Pap’s debauchery and itsseeming opposite, a sternly straight-laced but hypocritical society. Wisebeyond his years, cleverly practical but nonetheless supremely humane, Huckdefies societal conventions by befriending the black slave Jim while travellingwith him on their raft and whom, as Huck matures, he comes to see as hisequal. Huck’s maturation is impeded, though, by his respectable and bright butboyishly self-indulgent friend, Tom Sawyer.

JimJim – One of Miss Watson’s slaves, Jim runs away because he is afraid of beingseparated from his beloved wife and daughter. Jim is superstitious, butnonetheless intelligent; he is also freedom-loving, and nobly selfless. Hebecomes a kind of moral guide to Huck over the course of their travels

together, and, indeed, something of a spiritual father. Despite being the mostmorally upstanding character in the novel, Jim is ruthlessly persecuted andhunted and dehumanized. He bears his oppression with fiercely gracefulresistance.

TTom Saom Sawywyerer – Tom is Huck’s childhood friend, a boy from a respectable familywho is both bright and learned; he is also a seasoned prankster. As good-spirited as Tom is, he is not as morally mature as Huck, and his impracticalityendangers himself and others, especially Jim. Tom is also self-indulgent, evenselfish. Despite his shortcomings, however, Tom exerts a powerful influence onHuck.

The dukThe duke and kinge and king – The kind of people Huck and Tom might turn into werethey to only act out of self-interest, the duke and king are a couple of con menthat Huck and Jim travel with. The two are selfish, greedy, deceptive, anddebauched, but sometimes their actions expose and exploit societal hypocrisyin a way that is somewhat attractive and also rather revealing. Though theexploits of the duke and king can be farcical and fun to watch, the twodemonstrate an absolute, hideous lack of respect for human life and dignity.

The Widow Douglas and Miss WThe Widow Douglas and Miss Watsonatson – Two elderly sisters, the Widow andMiss Watson are Huck’s guardians at the beginning of the novel until Paparrives on the scene. The two women demand that Huck conform to societalnorms, which Huck resents. Miss Watson is hypocritical in holding Christianvalues yet cruelly keeping slaves, even separating Jim from his family.However, it would seem that she sees the light just before her death: she freesJim in her will.

PPapap – Huck’s father, Pap is a vicious drunk and racist, demonstrably beyondreform, who wants to have Huck’s fortune for himself. He resents Huck’ssocial mobility and, when not drunk or in jail, he can usually be found harassingHuck. Infuriated by the Widow at one point, Pap kidnaps Huck and imprisonshim in a cabin, where he beats Huck mercilessly, such that Huck is compelledto escape from him once and for all. Pap seems to be free from the Widow andMiss Watson’s idea of society, but he is enslaved to his own wretchedviciousness and alcoholism, as much a prisoner as anyone in the novel.

Judge ThatcherJudge Thatcher –A kind of guardian to Huck at the beginning of the novel.Judge Thatcher nobly helps the Widow in her bid for custody of Huck overPap, and, at the end of the novel, he dutifully restores to Huck his fortune.

Judith LJudith Loftusoftus – A shrewd, gentle woman whom Huck approaches disguised asa girl. Mrs. Loftus exposes that Huck is lying to her, but is kind to himnonetheless. Her husband is a slave-hunter pursuing Jim.

Colonel SherburnColonel Sherburn – A cold-blooded killer, Sherburn guns down the vocal butharmless drunkard Boggs for almost no reason at all, all of which Huckwitnesses in horror. When a lynch mob sets out to avenge Boggs’ death,Sherburn calmly scorns the mob as being full of cowards and absolutelyimpotent. He is right: the mob, humiliated, disperses.

The GrThe Grangerfords and Shepherdsonsangerfords and Shepherdsons – Two noble, pious, aristocratic familiesthat absurdly, bloodily feud with one another despite mutual respect. Huckstays with the Grangerfords after becoming separated from Jim, but becomesembroiled in their feud after he accidentally enables a Grangerford girl toelope with a Shepherdson boy. Huck is confused by how such good, bravepeople could be involved in such devastating madness.

JackJack – A Grangerford slave who tends to Huck and kindly shows him to whereJim is hiding nearby the Grangerford estate.

Mary Jane WilksMary Jane Wilks – The beautiful daughter of Peter Wilks, Huck is so movedby her goodness that he resolves to expose the duke and king as the con menthey are.

Joanna WilksJoanna Wilks – A daughter of Peter Wilks with a harelip, Joanna shrewdlycatches Huck in many lies as he plays along with the duke and king’simpersonation of the Wilks brothers.

Doctor Robinson and LDoctor Robinson and Leevi Bellvi Bell – The intelligent but somewhat condescendingfriends of Peter Wilks who suspect all along that the duke and king are frauds.

HarvHarveey and William Wilksy and William Wilks – Brothers of Peter Wilks who have traveled fromEngland to the U.S. for Peter’s funeral. William is a deaf mute. The duke andking impersonate them during one of their more disgusting scams.

CHARACHARACTERSCTERS

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PPeter Wilkseter Wilks – Brother of Harvey and William Wilks, father of Mary JaneWilks and her sisters; deceased.

Sally and Silas PhelpsSally and Silas Phelps – Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle, respectively, who areboth good people and parents, upstanding members of their community, andyet who troublingly support the institution of slavery, exemplified by theirdetainment of Jim. Huck and Tom trick the Phelpses when preparing for Jim’sescape, much to Aunt Sally’s fury and Uncle Silas’s innocent befuddlement.Aunt Sally offers to adopt Huck at the end of the novel, but he refuses to be“sivilized” by anyone.

NatNat – A Phelps slave whose superstitions Tom exploits in executing hisridiculous plan to free Jim.

Aunt PAunt Pollyolly – Tom Sawyer’s aunt and guardian, sister of Sally Phelps.

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SLASLAVERY AND RAVERY AND RACISMCISMThough Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn after theabolition of slavery in the United States, the novel itself is set before the CivilWar, when slavery was still legal and the economic foundation of the AmericanSouth. Many characters in Twain’s novel are themselves white slaveholders,like Miss Watson, the Grangerford family, and the Phelps family, while othercharacters profit indirectly from slavery, as the duke and the king do in turningMiss Watson’s runaway slave Jim into the Phelpses in exchange for a cashreward.

While slaveholders profit from slavery, the slaves themselves are oppressed,exploited, and physically and mentally abused. Jim is inhumanly ripped awayfrom his wife and children. However, white slaveholders rationalize theoppression, exploitation, and abuse of black slaves by ridiculously assuringthemselves of a racist stereotype, that black people are mentally inferior towhite people, more animal than human. Though Huck’s father, Pap, is a vicious,violent man, it is the much better man, Jim, who is suspected of Huck’s murder,only because Jim is black and because he ran away from slavery, in a bid forfreedom, to be with his family.

In this way, slaveholders and racist whites harm blacks, but they also do moralharm to themselves, by viciously misunderstanding what it is to be human, andall for the sake of profit. At the beginning of the novel, Huck himself buys intoracial stereotypes, and even reprimands himself for not turning Jim in forrunning away, given that he has a societal and legal obligation to do so.However, as Huck comes to know Jim and befriend him, he realizes that heand Jim alike are human beings who love and hurt, who can be wise or foolish.Jim proves himself to be a better man than most other people Huck meets inhis travels. By the end of the novel, Huck would rather defy his society and hisreligion—he'd rather go to Hell—than let his friend Jim be returned to slavery.

SOCIETY AND HYPOCRISYSOCIETY AND HYPOCRISYHuck lives in a society based on rules and traditions, many of which are bothridiculous and inhuman. At the beginning of the novel, Huck’s guardian, theWidow Douglas, and her sister, Miss Watson, try to “sivilize” Huck by teachinghim manners and Christian values, but Huck recognizes that these lessonstake more stock in the dead than in living people, and they do little more thanmake him uncomfortable, bored, and, ironically enough, lonely. After Huckleaves the Widow Douglas’s care, however, he is exposed to even darker partsof society, parts in which people do ridiculous, illogical things, often withviolent consequences. Huck meets good families that bloodily, fatally feud forno reason. He witnesses a drunken man get shot down for making a pettyinsult.

Even at the beginning of the novel, a judge ridiculously grants custody of Huckto Huck’s abusive drunkard of a father, Pap. The judge claims that Pap has alegal right to custody of Huck, yet, regardless of his right, Pap proves himselfto be a bad guardian, denying Huck an opportunity to educate himself, beatingHuck, and imprisoning in an isolated cabin. In such a case, fulfilling Pap’s legalright ridiculously compromises Huck’s welfare. Furthermore, Huck’s abuse

and imprisonment at the hands of Pap is implicitly compared to a morewidespread and deeply engrained societal problem, namely theinstitutionalized enslavement of black people. Huck comes to recognizeslavery as an oppressively inhuman institution, one that no truly “sivilized”society can be founded on. People like Sally Phelps, who seem good yet areracist slaveholders, are maybe the biggest hypocrites Huck meets on histravels.

RELIGION AND SUPERSTITIONRELIGION AND SUPERSTITIONThere are two systems of belief represented in The Adventures of HuckleberryFinn: formal religion (namely, Christianity) and superstition. The educated andthe “sivilized, like the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, practice Christianity,whereas the uneducated and poor, like Huck and Jim, have superstitions.Huck, despite (or maybe because of) the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson’stutelage, immediately has an aversion to Christianity on the grounds that ittakes too much stock in the dead and not enough in the living, that ChristianHeaven is populated by boringly rigid people like Miss Watson while Hellseems more exciting, and, finally, that Huck recognizes the uselessness ofChristianity. After all, prayers are never answered in Huck’s world.

On the other hand, Huck and Jim’s superstitions, silly though they are, are nosillier than Christianity. Huck and Jim read “bad signs” into everything, aswhen a spider burns in a candle, or Huck touches a snakeskin. Jim even has amagic hairball, taken from an ox’s stomach, that, when given money,supposedly tells the future. Huck and Jim find so many bad signs in the naturalworld that, whenever anything bad happens to them, they’re sure to have asign to blame it on. However, one of the subtle jokes of The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn, a joke with nevertheless serious implications, is that, silly assuperstition is, it is a more accurate way to read the world than formal religionis.

It is silly for Huck and Jim to read bad signs into everything, but it is not at allsilly for them to expect bad things to be just around the corner; for they live ina world where nature is dangerous, even fatally malevolent, and where peoplebehave irrationally, erratically, and, oftentimes, violently. In contrast, formalreligion dunks its practitioners into ignorance and, worse, cruelty. By Christianvalues as established in the American South, Huck is condemned to Hell fordoing the right thing by saving Jim from slavery. Huck, knowing that theChristian good is not the good, saves Jim anyway, thereby establishing onceand for all a new moral framework in the novel, one that cannot be co-opted bysociety into serving immoral institutions like slavery.

GRGROWING UPOWING UPThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn belongs to the genre of Bildungsroman;that is, the novel presents a coming-of-age story in which the protagonist,Huck, matures as he broadens his horizons with new experiences. Huck beginsthe novel as an immature boy who enjoys goofing around with his boyhoodfriend, Tom Sawyer, and playing tricks on others. He has a good heart but aconscience deformed by the society in which he was raised, such that hereprimands himself again and again for not turning Jim in for running away, asthough turning Jim in and prolonging his separation from his family were theright thing to do.

As the novel develops, however, so do Huck’s notions of right and wrong. Helearns that rigid codes of conduct, like Christianity, or like that whichmotivates the Grangerson and Shepherdson’s blood feud, don’t necessarilylead to good results. He also recognizes that absolute selfishness, like thatexhibited by Tom Sawyer to a small extent, and that exhibited by Tom’s muchworse prankster-counterparts, the duke and the king, is both juvenile andshameful. Huck learns that he must follow the moral intuitions of his heart,which requires that he be flexible in responding to moral dilemmas. And,indeed, it is by following his heart that Huck makes the right decision to helpJim escape from bondage.

This mature moral decision is contrasted with the immature way in which Tomgoes about acting on that decision at the Phelps farm. Instead of simplyhelping Jim, Tom devises a childishly elaborate scheme to free Jim, whichresults in Tom getting shot in the leg and Jim being recaptured. By the end ofThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is morally mature and realistic,whereas Tom still has a lot of growing up to do.

THEMESTHEMES

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FREEDOMFREEDOMHuck and Jim both yearn for freedom. Huck wants to be free of petty mannersand societal values. He wants to be free of his abusive father, who goes so faras to literally imprison Huck in a cabin. Maybe more than anything, Huckwants to be free such that he can think independently and do what his hearttells him to do. Similarly, Jim wants to be free of bondage so that he can returnto his wife and children, which he knows to be his natural right.

The place where Huck and Jim go to seek freedom is the natural world.Though nature imposes new constraints and dangers on the two, includingwhat Huck calls “lonesomeness,” a feeling of being unprotected from themeaninglessness of death, nature also provides havens from society and evenits own dangers, like the cave where Huck and Jim take refuge from a storm. Insuch havens, Huck and Jim are free to be themselves, and they can alsoappreciate from a safe distance the beauty that is inherent in the terror offreedom.

That being said, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn implies that people can beso free as to be, ironically enough, imprisoned in themselves. The duke and theking, for example, foils (or contrasts) to Huck and Jim, are so free that they canbecome almost anybody through playacting and impersonation. However, thisis only because they have no moral compass and are imprisoned in their ownselfishness. Freedom is good, but only insofar as the free person binds himselfto the moral intuitions of his heart.

Symbols appear in red text throughout the Summary & Analysis sections ofthis LitChart.

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVERThe Mississippi River, on and around which so much of the action ofHuckleberry Finn takes place, is a muscular, sublime, and dangerous body ofwater and a symbol for absolute freedom. It is literally the place where Huckfeels most comfortable and at ease, and also the means by which Huck and Jimhope to access the free states. The river is physically fluid, flexible, andprogressive, just as Huck and Jim are in their imaginatively free acts ofempathy with other characters and in their pragmatic adaptability to anycircumstances that come their way. However, in being absolutely free, theriver is also unpredictable and dangerous, best exemplified during the stormsthat again and again threaten the lives of Huck and Jim. When he is alone, freefrom any immediately external influence, Huck begins to feel very lonesomeand as destructive as the river itself, or, rather, self-destructive. The river, then,embodies the blessing and dangers of freedom, which must be carefullynavigated if one is to live a good, happy life.

THE RAFTIf the river is a symbol for absolute freedom, then the raft, host primarily toHuck and Jim but also to the duke and king, is a symbol for a limitation onemust necessarily impose on one’s freedom if one is not to be overwhelmed:peaceful coexistence. Unlike the sometimes ridiculous and hateful rules ofsociety, the rules of the raft are simple: respect differences and support oneanother. The raft is a kind of model society in which one can enjoy freedomunlike in society on shore, but at the same time not drown in one’s freedom.Huck says that his happiest days are spent on the raft with Jim. It is significantthat the literal destruction of the raft immediately precedes Huck’s fit ofconscience as to whether or not he should turn Jim in. Such a consideration, abetrayal, even, threatens to break Huck’s friendship with Jim just as the raft isbroken. Significant also is the fact that it is after Huck learns about the insanedestructiveness of human conflict from the Grangerford-Shepherdson feudthat Jim pops back into Huck’s life, the raft of their peaceful coexistencerepaired. This is all of course symbolic for the making, breaking, and repairingof trust and good faith in people despite their differences, and speaks to thefact that it is never too late to try to mend severed relations.

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CHAPTER 1 QUOTESYou don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “TheAdventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made byMr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which hestretched, but mainly he told the truth.

—Huck Finn

The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilizeme; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismalregular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t standit no longer, I lit out.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 2 QUOTES“But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”“Why blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books?”

—Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer

CHAPTER 3 QUOTESI went and told the Widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get bypraying for it was “spiritual gifts.” This was too much for me, but she told mewhat she means—I must help others, and do everything I could for otherpeople, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself…but Icouldn’t see no advantage about it—except for the other people—so at last Ireckoned I wouldn’t worry about it any more, but just let it go.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 4 QUOTESAt first I hated the school, but by-and-by I got so I could stand it…I liked the oldways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones too, a little bit.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 5 QUOTES“And looky here—you drop that school, you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up aboy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better’n what he is.”

—Pap

The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the oleman [Pap] with a shot-gun maybe, but he didn’t know no other way.

—Huck Finn

SYMBOLSSYMBOLS

QUOQUOTESTES

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CHAPTER 6 QUOTESThe widow she found out where I was, by-and-by, and she sent a man over totry to get hold of me, but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn’t longafter that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it, all but the cowhidepart.

—Huck Finn

But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand it. I wasall over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once helocked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome.

—Huck Finn

“When they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let thatnigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote again…I says to the people, whyain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?”

—Pap

CHAPTER 8 QUOTESThat is, there’s something in [prayer] when a body like the widow or the parsonprays, but it don’t work for me, and I reckon it don’t work for only just the rightkind.

—Huck Finn

I was ever so glad to see Jim. I warn’t lonesome, now.

—Huck Finn

“People will call me a low down Abolitionist and despise me for keepingmum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell, and I ain’t agoingback there anyways.”

—Huck Finn

“Yes—en I’s rich now come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’ddollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo’.”

—Jim

CHAPTER 12 QUOTES“I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git around it; it ain’t goodsense, it ain’t good morals.”

—Robber on the wreck

CHAPTER 13I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. Isays to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself,yet, and then how would I like it?

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 14Well, he [Jim] was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon levelhead, for a nigger.

—Huck Finn

I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So Iquit.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 15“My heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’t k’yer no mo’ whatbecome er me en de raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin’, all safe ensoun’, de tears come en I could a got down on my knees en kiss’ yo’ foot I’s sothankful. En all you wuz thinkin ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jimwid a lie.”

—Jim

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myselfto a nigger—but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 16Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him,because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and whowas to blame for it? Why, me.

—Huck Finn

So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about [right and wrong], but after thisalways do whichever comes handiest at the time.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 18“Did you want to kill [the Shepherdson], Buck?”“Well, I bet I did.”“What did he do to you?”“Him? He never done nothing to me.”“Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?”“Why nothing—only it’s on account of the feud.”

—Huck Finn, Buck Grangerford

CHAPTER 19For what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied,and feel right and kind towards others.

—Huck Finn

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CHAPTER 20“I doan’ mine one er two kings, but dat’s enough. Dis one’s powerful drunk, ende duke ain’ much better.”

—Jim

CHAPTER 22“The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’tfight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed fromtheir mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head ofit, is beneath pitifulness.”

—Colonel Sherburn

CHAPTER 23I do believe [Jim] cared just as much for his people as white folks does fortheir’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 27I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief;they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to seeit. The girls said they hadn’t ever dreamed of seeing the family separated orsold away from the town.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 30“Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would you a done any different? Did you inquirearound for him, when you got loose? I don’t remember it.”

—The duke

CHAPTER 31“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and [I] tore [my note to Miss Watson] up.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 33I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell, considerable, in my estimation. Only Icouldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a nigger stealer!—Huck Finn

I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals [the duke and king], it seems like Icouldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was adreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.

—Huck Finn

CHAPTER 42“I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller, and yet he wasresking his freedom to do it…He ain’t no bad nigger, gentlemen; that’s what Ithink about him.”

—The doctor

CHAPTER 43But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because AuntSally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been therebefore.

—Huck Finn

The color-coded boxes under "Analysis & Themes" below make it easy to trackthe themes throughout the work. Each color corresponds to one of thethemes explained in the Themes section of this LitChart.

CHAPTER 1Huck introduces himself as acharacter from Mark Twain’s earliernovel, “The Adventures of TomSawyer.” Huck says that, while thebook is mostly true, Twain told some“stretchers,” or lies, but that that’sokay, because most people tell lies onetime or another. Huck explains how, atthe end of the adventure recounted inthe earlier book, he and Tom Sawyerboth became rich, and that the WidowDouglas adopted him and tried to“sivilize” him. However, Huck becamebored with the Widow’s decency andregularity and ran away, but, at last,reluctantly returned when Tom toldHuck that, if he returned, he could bepart of Tom’s gang of robbers.

Though society, as represented by theWidow Douglas and Miss Watson, wouldcondemn all instances of lying, Huck is arealist, able to look beyond the rigid rulesof society in forming moral judgments.He recognizes that people lie and that, insome situations, lying is okay. Huckgrows bored of societal rigidity and runsaway, only to be convinced to return byTom Sawyer's imaginative games, whichpromise a kind of adventure (if not "real"adventure).

After Huck returned to the WidowDouglas, she wept, dressed Huck innew clothes that made himuncomfortable, and again imposed onhim a life of punctuality and manners.For example, the Widow Douglasrequires that Huck not begin eatinghis dinner immediately after it isserved, but that he wait until she“grumble,” or pray, over it. Huck says,though, that the food is good, eventhough each dish is served by itself.He prefers it when dishes are servedtogether so that the juice “swapsaround.” The Widow also imposesChristian values on Huck. However,Huck complains that the Bible isirrelevant to him because all of itscharacters are dead, and he doesn’ttake any stock in dead people.

The rules of society are sometimesridiculous to Huck, like praying before ameal, especially when one’s prayersounds less like thanks than a grumblingcomplaint. Huck is also intuitivelyagainst how society separates thingswith arbitrary boundaries, like food here,but, later, classes and races. Just as Hucklikes the juices of his food to mingle, sotoo is he inclined to cross societalboundaries in service of what his hearttells him is right. Such boundaries, likereligion, serve the dead. Huck caresabout the living—about life.

SUMMARY & ANALSUMMARY & ANALYSISYSIS

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The Widow Douglas forbade Huckfrom smoking in the house as well.Huck points out that the Widowcondones useless things like studyingthe Bible, but forbids Huck from doinggood and useful things, like smoking.Furthermore, he points out that theWidow herself takes snuff, a tobaccoproduct, and says that this is alright,not on principle, but only because sheherself does it.

The Widow Douglas is good and kind,and yet, like many members of society,she can be a hypocrite. What motivatesher hypocrisy is self-interest: though shecondemns Huck for smoking, the Widowdoesn’t condemn snuff because sheherself takes it.

Meanwhile, the Widow Douglas’ssister, Miss Watson, teaches Huckhow to spell, critiques his posture, andtells him about Heaven and Hell.Wanting a change in hiscircumstances, any change, Huck sayshe would rather be in Hell than inHeaven, much to Miss Watson’sconsternation. She responds that sheis living her life such that she can go toHeaven. Huck concludes that he’dcertainly rather not go to whereverMiss Watson is going, but saysnothing of this so as not to furtherupset her. He asks Miss Watsonwhether Tom Sawyer is going toHeaven or Hell. When Miss Watsonsays he’s going to Hell, Huck is glad,because that means he and his friendcan be together.

Huck is frustrated with society asrepresented by Miss Watson’slessons—by its strictness, its empty rulesabout how one must be and look—andhe knows that society needs to changesomehow. He wants to go to Hellbecause it sounds better than his currentcircumstances, less boring and moreaccepting. This choice foreshadowsHuck’s later choice to be damned insaving Jim.

After Huck’s talk with Miss Watson,Huck goes up to his bedroom. He sits,tries to think cheerful thoughts, but isso lonesome that he wishes he weredead. He looks out his window atnature, sees the stars, and hearsmournful, ghostly sounds in the leavesand in the birdcalls. A spider crawls onHuck’s shoulder. Huck flicks thespider into a candle, where it burns.Huck, frightened, takes this as a signof bad luck. Soon afterward, he hearsa meowing outside. Huck meows backand goes outside, to find Tom Sawyerwaiting for him.

When Huck is alone, away from society,free, he sometimes becomes lonesome,specifically when he perceives signs ofdeath, like the sound of the dead leaves,as they are reflected in the natural world.Such a feeling is only exacerbated byHuck’s childish superstitions, like hisreading of the burning spider as a sign ofbad luck. This lonesomeness is relievedwhen Huck is with friends like Tom.

CHAPTER 2As Huck and Tom Sawyer sneak awayfrom the Widow Douglas’s house,Huck trips and makes a noise. One ofMiss Watson’s slaves, Jim, hears thenoise and leans out of the kitchendoorway and asks who’s there. Huckand Tom are silent, hiding in the dark,even though Huck needs to scratch anitch, which Huck says is even itchierbecause he knows he can’t scratch itwithout making a noise. Jim comesoutside and searches for the source ofthe sound but, finding nothing,eventually sits down and falls asleep.

Jim is a good man: even though hedetests his enslavement, he investigatesthe noise to make sure that there isnothing dangerous outside threateningMiss Watson or her interests. Huck’spredicament shows that making a bid forfreedom can be uncomfortable, but hewould rather be uncomfortable now andfree later than otherwise.

Despite Huck’s protests, Tom takessome candles from the WidowDouglas’s kitchen, leaving five cents inpayment, and then tricks the sleepingJim by taking Jim’s hat off of his headand hanging it on a nearby treebranch. Afterwards, Jim tells hisfellow slaves that a witch possessedhim and rode him everywhere thatnight, hanging his hat on the branch toshow that she had rode him so. Jim’sfellow slaves would come from far andwide to listen to Jim’s story.

Tom takes risks, like stealing the candles,that Huck objects to. Huck is morepractical, perhaps because Tom comesfrom a more privileged background thanHuck. Like Huck, Jim explains unknownphenomena, like how his hat got into thetree, with superstitious explanations. Itseems silly for the other slaves to believeHuck's stories, but later in the novelmany religious whites will believe storiesjust as ridiculous.

Tom and Huck meet up with someother boys, and, after a shortexcursion, end up in a cave, whereTom announces that the boys presentcan be members of his band ofrobbers, which he calls Tom Sawyer’sGang. All the boys want to bemembers, and, after swearing an oaththat Tom fashioned after what he readin robber and pirate books, areinducted into the Gang. However, theoath requires that, if a memberreveals a secret of the Gang, his familybe killed. Huck doesn’t have a familyother than a drunkard father who noone can ever find, and so the boysdebate whether he should beinducted into the Gang at all. Huck atlast offers Miss Watson to be killed,which his fellows accept.

Here, the boys play at making their ownsociety. Like the society of the South, thatof the boys is rooted in silly traditions,those Tom derived from his robber andpirate books. But the boys alsodemonstrate that they are more flexiblethan members of the society of theSouth. They are willing to bend their ownrules so that Huck can be a member ofthe Gang.

The members of Tom Sawyer’s Gangdebate what their purpose will be.Tom declares that the Gang’s purposeis to rob people on the roads ofwatches and money, and then toeither kill or ransom those whom theyrob. One boy questions whether theGang should ransom people, but Tominsists that it must, because that iswhat happens in the books that hereads. The only problem is that no oneknows what it means to ransomsomeone. Tom concludes that it is tokeep someone until they die, and theboys agree this must be the case. Theboys also agree not to kill women, butto keep them in the cave and treatthem very sweetly. The Gang decidesto pull off its first robbery, but can’t doit on Sunday because that would bewicked. The Gang disperses, and Huckreturns home.

Tom’s Gang, like society, is rooted inarbitrary traditions that have lost theirmeaning. The boys don’t know whatransoming is, but adopt it as a practiceonly because of tradition. While it is okayfor a make-believe gang to do so, it ischildish for adults in society to do so,especially considering that, while theviolence done by Tom’s gang is pretend,that perpetrated by society is very real,with bloody, sometimes deadlyconsequences. This passage also pointsout how ridiculous it is to obey the letterof Christianity but not the spirit: the boysare going to do something bad, robpeople, but insist that they can’t do it onSunday, because Sunday is a holy day.But wicked things are no more wicked onone day than another—the boys aremixing up looking like good Christianswith actually being good Christians, justas it becomes clear many adults also do.

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CHAPTER 3After Huck returns home, MissWatson scolds him for having dirtiedhis clothes. The Widow Douglas doesnot scold Huck, but washes hisclothes, looking so sorry as she doesso that Huck resolves to behavehimself. Miss Watson takes Huck intoa closet to pray, telling him that he willreceive whatever he asks for, butHuck concludes that this is not thecase, on the grounds that, when heprayed for a “fish-line,” he got one, butit didn’t have any hooks and wastherefore useless.

Though they seem to hold the sameChristian values, Miss Watson is strictwithout compassion, whereas the Widowis compassionate. As Christianity is areligion rooted in compassion, it could besaid that Miss Watson and the Widowreally do hold different values. Indeed,Miss Watson tells Huck that one getswhatever one prays for, but this is not aChristian conception of prayer at all. It’sa superstition.

Huck recounts how he sat down, onetime, in the back of the woods andthought about prayer. He wonders, ifsomeone gets whatever he or sheprays for, why, for example, theWidow Douglas can’t get her silversnuff-box back that was stolen. Huckconcludes that, insofar as prayer isconcerned, “there ain’t nothing in it.”He tells the Widow this, and she saysone can only get “spiritual gifts” bypraying, that is, gifts that aid one inbeing selfless. Huck thinks thatselflessness is not advantageous, anddecides to just “let it go.” He goes on tosay, though, that there must be twoProvidences, that of the Widow andthat of Miss Watson, and that hewould belong to the former, eventhough it might not help himconsidering that he is so “ignorantand…low-down and ornery.”

Huck realizes that Miss Watson’sconception of prayer as getting whateveryou ask for doesn’t account for the actualeffects of prayer. The Widow Douglasclarifies that one doesn’t get whateverone prays for in Christian thought, butrather that one receives not material butspiritual gifts through prayer. Thepractical Huck doesn’t value such giftsvery highly, but he does conclude that, ifgiven the choice between Miss Watson’sseemingly Christian values and theWidow’s real Christian values, he’d takethe latter.

Huck thinks about his father Pap, whohadn’t been seen for more than a year,which is just fine with Huck. Pap is anabusive drunkard. People thoughtthat he had drowned, because a bodyresembling his had been dredgedfrom the river, but Huck doesn’t thinkit was Pap’s body after all, because thebody was discovered floating on itsback, and men, Huck thinks, float ontheir faces, so that body must havebeen a woman’s.

This foreshadows Pap’s reappearancelater in the novel, as well as the episodein which Huck disguises himself as a girl,only to be found out for what he is. ThatHuck knows how women and men floatspeaks to his familiarity with thedestructiveness of nature and horrors ofdeath, shocking given his young age.

Huck turns to thinking about TomSawyer’s Gang. They played robberfor about a month, before all the boys,including Huck, resigned from thegang because they hadn’t robbedanyone but only pretended to. Theywould hide in the woods and chargeon passers-by, like hog-drovers andwomen in carts taking produce tomarket. Tom referred to the hogs as“ingots” and produce as “julery”, butHuck sees no profit in pretending.

More than anything, Tom loves topretend, and he is very childlike in thisway. Play is its own reward for him. Incontrast, Huck is interested in materialprofit, which is an interest shared by theadults in the novel. Unlike Tom, Huck’schildhood, it would seem, has endedprematurely, maybe because of thedifficulties of his life, the poverty that heagain and again contends with.

One time, Huck goes on to recount,Tom summoned the Gang and toldthem about a large group of Spanishmerchants and “A-rabs” who weregoing to camp in a nearby cave withtheir elephants, camels, mules,diamonds, and other exotic riches.After polishing their swords and guns,which were really just “lath andbroom-sticks,” the Gang set out to raidthe Spanish and Arab camp, only tofind a Sunday school picnic in its place.The Gang chased the children at thepicnic and seized their goods. WhenHuck points out to Tom that therewere no Spaniards and Arabs, Tomtells Huck he is wrong, that it onlyseemed that way because magicianstransformed the Spaniards and Arabsand their possessions into “an infantSunday school.”

Tom has a wildly active imagination,fueled by the books he has read. He canturn even something mundane like aSunday school picnic into the object ofadventure. When Huck, always therealist, challenges Tom’s imaginings asfake, Tom can defend their reality withyet new imaginings, as he defends hisimaginings of the Arabs and Spaniardswith imaginings of magicians. In this way,Tom shows that, with the power ofimagination, one can defy the logic of thereal world (for better and, we will see, forworse).

After calling Huck a “numskull” forthinking that the Sunday school picnicwas just that, Tom explains to Huckthat a magician could call up genies toaid them in their enchantments. Huckasks Tom if the Gang can summongenies to help them, but Tom saysthat, to summon a genie, one musthave a lamp or ring to rub, and thatthe genies are powerful enough tobuild even palaces. Huck says that thegenies are “a pack of flatheads” forserving someone when they couldkeep the palaces for themselves. Tomretorts that Huck is a “perfect sap-head.” Later, to see if there is anythingto what Tom says, Huck got a lamp andring and rubbed them, but no geniecame. Huck concludes that Tom liedabout the Arabs and elephants, for thegroup the Gang robbed “had all themarks of a Sunday school.”

Given that they are so powerful, Huckthinks, genies are foolish for servingothers slavishly when they could servethemselves. This reveals one of Huck’scommitments to freedom: if one is ableto liberate oneself, one should do so.Though Huck doesn’t cross-apply thiscommitment to black slaves in bondagenow, he later will. Note, also, that Hucktests Tom’s claim about how genies aresummoned. Huck is open but skepticalabout others ideas and is keen to testwhat others tell him on his own terms, atrait which enables him to penetratesocietal hypocrisy.

CHAPTER 4Three or four months pass since theGang’s raid on the Sunday school.Huck has been going to school andlearning reading, writing, andarithmetic, though he “don’t take nostock in mathematics.” He hatedschool at first, but gets used to it. He isalso getting used to the regularity ofthe Widow’s household, and evencoming to like it.

It is telling that Huck finds reading andwriting valuable, both social subjectsconcerned with communication in thereal world, but not arithmetic, a rigidlyabstract subject. That said, Huck isadaptable enough that he soon comes tolike what he hated at first.

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One morning, Huck overturns asaltcellar at breakfast. To ward off badluck, he reaches for the spilt contentsto throw some salt over his leftshoulder, but Miss Watson preventshim from doing so, telling him that heis a mess-maker. As Huck uneasilyheads out of the house, he keeps alookout for bad things coming his way.As he walks, he sees in the snowsomebody’s tracks, the left boot-heelof which, because studded with nails,leaves crosses in the ground to wardoff the devil.

Miss Watson is always telling Huckabout her Christian superstitions, butshe sees his superstitions as ridiculous.That said, Huck does indeed encountersomething bad: the telltale marks of hisfather’s tracks in the snow (though thenovel builds suspense by not revealingjust what the bad thing is yet). Huck’slogical misstep is in thinking that spillingthe salt caused his father to reappear.

Huck nervously makes his way toJudge Thatcher’s house. The judgetells Huck that the six thousanddollars he has left in the bank hascollected interest, and warns himagainst taking any money out of thebank. Huck replies he wants JudgeThatcher to have all of his money. TheJudge, not quite understandingHuck’s intentions, buys Huck’sproperty for a dollar.

In response to seeing Pap’s tracks, Huckdoes something both reasonable andpractical: he gives his money to JudgeThatcher so that the greedy Pap can’ttake it from him, which would otherwisebe allowed by the backwards custodylaws of society.

Huck goes on to tell how Jim has ahairball, taken from the belly of an ox,that Jim does magic with. Huck goesto Jim, tells him that he saw Pap’stracks in the snow (those that leavethe cross), and asks what Pap is goingto do and how long he is going to bearound. Jim says something over thehairball and drops it on the ground,but the hairball doesn’t talk. Jimexplains that the hairball sometimesneeds money to talk. Huck gives thehairball a badly counterfeited quarterwith brass showing through the silver,saying nothing of the dollar he gotfrom Judge Thatcher. After Jim putsthe quarter in a split raw potato tocover the brass, he and Huck put itunder the hairball, Jim tells Huck thatthe hairball prophesies that Papdoesn’t know what he is going to do,and that Huck is going to havetroubles and joys in his life. WhenHuck goes up to his room, he finds Papsitting there.

It might seem that Jim is trying to conHuck out of money by telling him thatsometimes his hairball requires paymentbefore it speaks, but it must beremembered that Jim himself issuperstitious, and that he gladly acceptsHuck’s counterfeited quarter, as thoughto con not Huck but the hairball itself.Huck is, again, practical here, as an adultwould be, in saying nothing about hisactual dollar, thereby protecting it.Finally, note that, while Jim and Huck aresuperstitious about the hairball, they donot attribute a supernatural explanationto the re-silvering of the counterfeitedquarter. What is considered magical inHuck’s world is arbitrary.

CHAPTER 5Huck is scared at first to see the old,greasy, pale Pap sitting in his roombecause Pap “tanned,” or beat, him sooften, but soon is not scared at all. Papreprimands Huck for wearing niceclothes, and says that because Huckhas learned to read and write he mustthink he’s better than his own father.Pap vows to take Huck’s “frills” out ofhim. Pap warns that Huck better stopgoing to school, because none ofHuck’s family was educated, and,therefore, neither should Huck.

Far from offering Huck any kind offreedom from his strictly “sivilized”lifestyle, Pap imposes yet another kind ofimprisonment, one based on class, whereHuck is prevented from bettering andeducating himself. This is counter-intuitive: Pap should want the best forhis son, but he instead wants no betterfor Huck than what he himself had.

Pap tells Huck that he hears thatHuck is rich now, but Huck says thathe doesn’t have any money. Pap callsHuck a liar and says that he wantsHuck’s money. Huck shells out his onedollar and Pap takes it to buy whiskeywith.

Huck would rather enable Pap’s drinkingby giving him money than be beat for notdoing so, reflecting a pragmaticcommitment to being responsible foroneself.

The next day, Pap is drunk and tries tocoerce Judge Thatcher into givinghim Huck’s fortune, but the Judgerefuses. Afterward, Judge Thatcherand the Widow go to a court of law totake Huck from Pap’s custody, but thenew judge whom they appeal to, so-called because he is new to the court,says he wouldn’t take a son from hisfather. Judge Thatcher and theWidow are forced to quit thebusiness, and Pap is granted custodyof Huck.

The new judge whom the Widow andJudge Thatcher approach delivers ahypocritical ruling: he gives Pap custodyof Huck because he thinks that thetradition of parent raising child honorsthe welfare of the child, yet Huck’swelfare is actively endangered by Pap.The judge ignores the actual facts infavor of a principle that doesn’t hold inevery situation.

Pap is pleased with the court’scustody ruling. He threatens to beatHuck “black and blue” unless Huckraises money for him. Huck borrowsthree dollars from Judge Thatcher,which Pap uses to get drunk, goingaround town “cussing and whoopingand carrying on.” Pap is jailed formaking such a ruckus.

As Miss Watson is stuck in her valuesand ways, so is Pap stuck in his cruelty,selfishness, drunkenness, anddebauchery. Even having his freedomtaken away doesn’t deter him fromacting badly.

After Pap is released, the new judgeresolves to reform him. He invites Papto supper, where he lectures Pap ontemperance and other virtues till Papbegins to cry and swears that, thoughhe has been a fool, he is going to turnhis life around. The judge believes Pap,and has his whole family shake Pap’shand, once “the hand of a hog,” but nomore. All cry. The judge provides Papwith a room, but soon after Pap beginsto desire alcohol. He climbs out of hisroom, trades his new coat for whiskey,and climbs back into the room. Thenext morning, he crawls out of theroom again, drunk, breaks his arm, andalmost freezes to death where he falls.The judge is upset, and says that Papcould be reformed “with a shot-gun,maybe,” but by no other means.

The new judge, maybe regretting that hehas given the debauched Pap custody ofHuck, tries to give Pap an opportunity tobreak out of his irresponsible ways, andPap seems to attempt to do so. But hishabits are too deeply ingrained to becorrected: as soon as he is given back hisfreedom, Pap indulges in his literally self-destructive behaviors again. Healtogether lacks Huck’s adaptability. Papmay not be “regular” like the Widow andMs. Watson, but he is no more free thanthey are, imprisoned in his bad ways ashe is. Only in death, the judge thinks, cansuch a man be free.

CHAPTER 6Pap continues to harass JudgeThatcher for Huck’s money, and heharasses Huck for not stoppingschool. Huck goes to schoolnevertheless, with even more desire ifonly to spite Pap. The “law trial” Papinstigates proceeds slowly, so Huckborrows two or three dollars fromJudge Thatcher once in a while to giveto Pap, so that Huck might avoid abeating. With Huck’s money, Pap getsdrunk, and every time he gets drunkhe gets rowdy and is jailed. Huckthinks this “was right in his line.”

Even though Huck is adaptable to hissurroundings, he is more rebellious thananything: it’s exactly because Pap tellshim not to go to school that Huck insistson going to school. Huck pushes backagainst any rigid structure that isimposed on him. Pap, on the other hand,leads a repetitious life, getting drunk,getting, jailed, getting drunk, etc.

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When Pap loiters around the Widow’sestate too much, the Widowreprimands him. Pap vows to showher who Huck’s boss is, so one day hekidnaps Huck and takes him to anisolated log hut in the woods near theriver. Pap is with Huck at all times, sothat Huck has no chance for escape.The two live on what fish they catchand what game they shoot with Pap’s(probably stolen) gun. Sometimes Paplocks Huck up to go down to the storeto trade fish and game for whiskey.Huck eventually becomes accustomedto his new living situation, despite thebeatings.

The cabin that Pap takes Huck to is asymbol for imprisonment, a place whereHuck’s freedom is physically limited.Huck’s imprisonment there is analogousto Jim’s bondage: both are socio-economically motivated (Pap wantsHuck’s money as a slaveholder wants toprofit from holding his slave), and bothinvolve oppression and violence.Characteristically, Huck adapts to life inthe cabin, because he has no otherreasonable option.

Huck comes to like the “lazy and jolly”life he leads with Pap, the smoking andfishing he does without the burden ofstudy. His nice clothes become dirtyand tattered. Huck even wonders howhe ever adapted to the lifestyleendorsed by the Widow, what with itsmanners and rules. Though Huck hadstopped cussing over the course of his“sivilizing,” he resumes because Papdoesn’t object.

Huck lives in the present, unbound by thepast: he lives whatever life he thinks iscurrently best, and has no nostalgia forhis previous ways of life. Oneconsequence of this, though, is that Huckis something of a slow learner: it’sbecause he doesn’t change readily inresponse to past experiences that Huck isso slow to accept Jim not as a black slaveinferior to whites but as an equal humanbeing deserving of freedom.

However, Pap eventually begins tobeat Huck so often and so severelythat Huck, covered with welts, can nolonger stand the abuse. Pap alsobegins to leave Huck alone too often,locking him in the cabin, such thatHuck is often “dreadful lonesome.”Scared one time that Pap hasdrowned and that he might never befreed from the cabin, Huck begins tolook for ways to escape. There is noway out of the cabin, though, so Hucklooks for tools to make an escape. Hefinds a rusty old saw which hecarefully begins to use an old saw hefinds to remove a section from a log ofthe cabin, big enough for him tosqueeze through. Soon after hebegins, Huck hears Pap’s gun go off inthe woods outside. Huck hides allevidence of his work, just before Papreturns home.

It is only when a way of life becomesuntenable for Huck that he seeks tochange it. Here, for example, it is onlyafter living with Pap becomes unsafethat Huck seeks means of escaping fromPap, which he could have done anytimein the past but neglected to do. Huckformulates a very practical plan for hisescape, resourceful and efficient. Thisplan is contrasted later with Tom’s planto liberate Jim from the Phelps Farm,which is maybe more stylish than Huck’s,but much more romantic, less practical,and more dangerous.

Pap is characteristically in a bad moodwhen he comes in. He rants that hislawsuit to get Huck’s money isproceeding too slowly, and that itlooks as though the Widow and JudgeThatcher may be successful inanother bid to win custody of Huck.This shakes Huck up “considerable,”because Huck doesn’t want to returnto being “sivilized” at this point. Papthen begins to cuss violently, sayingthat he’d like to see the Widow try toget custody of Huck, threatening totake Huck to an even more isolatedlocation. Huck is worried, butconsoles himself that Pap won’t getthe chance to take him away, becauseHuck will have escaped by then. Paptells Huck to load their skiff (a kind ofboat) with supplies required for ajourney, prompting Huck to furtherplan his escape.

That Huck wants to live neither with theWidow, where he is not free enough, norwith Pap, where he is too free, revealsthat freedom for Huck can be eitherdeficient or excessive, and that the idealdegree of freedom is somewhere betweenthose two extremes, between living onlyby rigid rules or flouting such rulesaltogether. However, at this point, Huckhas not yet learned which rules he shouldlive by, and it is education in this regardthat constitutes a major part of hismaturation.

After Huck loads the skiff, he and Papsit down to dinner, during which Papbecomes drunk. He begins to rantagainst the government for takingHuck from his flesh-and-blood father,just as Huck is becoming useful to him,and also for supporting JudgeThatcher in keeping Huck’s money.Pap then goes on to denounce thegovernment for allowing a man ofmixed race to become a wealthy,educated college professor with theright to vote, because Pap doesn’tthink a person of mixed race shouldhave opportunities and rights as goodas those of white people. Indeed, hethinks the professor should be put upat a slave auction and sold.

Pap thinks of himself as a victim of badgovernment policies, but in doing so heneglects to take into account the peoplewho have tried to help him salvage hislife, like the new judge, nor does heaccept responsibility for his baddecisions. Pap is also resentful of allpeople more successful than he is; avicious racist, he doesn’t believe a blackman should be more materiallysuccessful than him, and is resentful ofsuccessful black people in general.

As he rants, Pap wanders around thecabin, eventually tripping on a tub ofsalt pork, which makes him cuss evenmore. He hops around the cabin, kicksthe tub with his boot that has “acouple of his toes leaking out of thefront end,” howls even more, and endsup rolling around in the dirt. Aftersupper, Pap gets his jug of whiskey,and Huck predicts that he will be verydrunk by the end of the night, at whichpoint Huck could make his escape. ButPap stays up late thrashing andmoaning, and Huck himself,exhausted, falls asleep. He wakes toPap screaming that snakes arecrawling up his legs. Pap hops aroundthe cabin some more till he falls down,and, after rolling violently on the floor,lies still, saying soon thereafter thatthe dead are after him. Pap rises andcrawls, begging the dead to leave himalone, and starts to cry.

Pap’s self-destructiveness is exemplifiedin this scene: he hurts himself, but, ratherthan tend to his injury, he, ratherhypocritically, only exacerbates it bylashing out and, in lashing out, hurtinghimself even more This resembles how herefuses the new judge’s help in beingreformed and, falling back intodrunkenness, literally hurts himself afterfalling out of his window. As for Pap’shallucinations, the first may draw onPap’s religious beliefs. In the Bible, thesnake is a figure for the Devil and sin,which Pap is haunted by. Pap’shallucination of the dead touching himforeshadows his own death by drowningchapters later.

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After some time passes, Pap jumps up“looking wild,” and he goes after Huckwith a knife, calling him the Angel ofDeath. Huck tells Pap that he’s not theAngel of Death, but Pap only laughsand continues to chase Huck. At onepoint, Pap grabs Huck by the back ofhis jacket. Huck thinks that Pap is justabout to kill him, and so he slides outof his jacket and succeeds in savinghimself. Pap soon drops down with hisback against the door to rest, guardingthe knife under him, and falls asleep.Huck grabs Pap’s gun, loads it, andpoints it at the sleeping Pap, waiting,as time slowly drags on, for him towake up.

Pap is clearly not in his right mind at thispoint, drunk and despairing as he is, somuch so that he thinks Huck is the Angelof Death. An irony here is that, thoughPap’s hallucination pertains to aChristian image, Pap is acting mostunlike a Christian: he does not acceptdeath tranquilly, with the promise ofredemption and eternal life in Heaven inmind, and he is viciously violent towardHuck.

CHAPTER 7Pap wakes Huck, who fell asleep in thenight, and asks him what he’s doingwith the gun. Huck lies and says thatsomeone tried to break in and thatHuck was lying in wait for theintruder, which Pap accepts. He tellsHuck to go check the fishing line forbreakfast. Huck does so, scanning ashe does the rising river. Seeing apassing canoe, Huck jumps into it andpaddles it ashore, thinking Pap will bepleased. But then another idea strikesHuck: he decides to hide the canoeand use it in his escape.

Huck tells many lies in the novel, usually,as here, white lies that are practical andmotivated by Huck’s desire to protectpeople, including, sometimes, himself. Hislie to Pap here no doubt protects Huckfrom an undeserved beating. Huck’s skillin lying is part of his adaptability andlove of freedom. When rigidly adhering tothe truth would cause undo harm, Hucksacrifices the truth.

After Huck returns to shore, Papberates him for taking so long with thefish. Huck lies that he fell in the river.Huck and Pap get five catfish off thefishing lines and head hone. As thetwo Finns lay about and Pap says thatHuck should rouse him the next timean intruder comes prowling, Huck hasan idea to prevent Pap and the Widowfrom pursuing him after he makes hisescape.

As earlier, Huck again tells a white lie toPap to cover up his escape plans. Huck ismore committed to freedom than he iseven to truth. But Huck is not committedto freedom in an idealistic, impracticalway: he is willing to do whatever it takesto execute his escape plan efficiently,without a trace.

Pap and Huck collect nine logs fromthe river to sell and then eat dinner.Pap is content to do so, even thoughany other man would keep scanningthe river for things to sell from it.After dinner, Pap locks Huck up in thecabin again and boats to town to sellthe nine logs. After Pap has gotten aways, Huck retrieves his saw from itshiding place and finishes making hishole in the cabin, through which hethen escapes. Huck takes provisionsfrom the cabin, anything “worth acent,” and stores them in his hiddencanoe. He hides any trace of hisescape by covering his tracks andsealing the hole he made in the cabin.

Pap, like Huck, proves himself to bepractical, collecting only as many logs tosell as he needs before quitting. But,unlike Huck, Pap’s practicality servesself-destructive ends, like the purchase ofwhiskey, as opposed to a nobler end likefreedom. This is the end Huck’spracticality serves as Huck takes what heneeds from Pap’s cabin and hides alltraces of his escape by covering histracks, literally and otherwise.

Huck takes Pap’s gun into the nearbywoods, kills a hog, and takes the hogback to his camp. He smashes in thedoor of the cabin with an ax, takes thepig inside, and slits its throat so thatits blood covers the dirt floor of thecabin. Huck wishes Tom could join himto “throw in the fancy touches.” Huckthen bloodies the ax, sticks some ofhis own pulled-out hair onto the blade,and slings the tool into a corner of thecabin. He also takes a sack full of rocksand the pig carcass and dumps both inthe river. Finally, Huck takes the bagof meal out of his canoe and back tothe house, rips it open, and carries thesack about a hundred yards from thehouse, trailing meal as he does so. Healso drops Pap’s whetstone at the spotwhere he stops trailing the grain. ThenHuck ties the bag of meal so it stopssifting out and returns to his canoe.

Freedom, as Huck’s actions prove here, isnot free. Huck literally sacrifices a hog tomake sure that his escape goesunnoticed, and that he himself cansuccessfully disappear into his newfoundfreedom. Though Huck now wishes hisescape to be stylish as Tom would haveit, later, when freeing Jim from the PhelpsFarm, Huck will wish Tom were morepractical, suggesting that he has animmature attitude about style now thathe grows out of over the course of thenovel. Certainly, though Huck has whatcould be called a “practicalimagination”—he thinks of how to tie upevery loose end in his escape.

As Huck waits for the moon to comeout so that he can travel by its light, heeats, smokes, and thinks to himselfthat people looking for him after hisescape, thinking him dead, will followthe trail left by the sack full of rocks tothe river and afterwards dredge theriver for his body, as well as the trail ofmeal in order to find the “robbers thatkilled [him].” He is sure, though, thatnobody will think that he is alive, muchless find him. He plans to paddle to aplace called Jackson’s Island on theriver, and to visit towns at night tostock up on supplies. Huck soon fallsasleep, only to soon wake. It looks lateto Huck, and “smelt late” too, thoughHuck acknowledges that he doesn’tknow how to put the sensation inwords.

Huck reveals himself to be veryempathetic here. He imagines howpeople would react to a set ofcircumstances, like the trail left by therocks leading down to the river. However,Huck’s empathy is limited. It may extendto a search party, for example, but it willnot extend to people like Jim, who Huckthinks of as being, in some ways, inferiorto white people, until Huck matures.That being said, Huck does have aunique imagination that will enable himto so mature, as indicated by thestrangely imagined sensation he has of“smelling” lateness

Huck hears a sound. It is Pap paddlingback to the cabin. Huck loses no timein slipping quietly down the river in hiscanoe, shaded by the bank. Hepaddles down the center of the riverto avoid being hailed by people on theferry landing before, at last, reachingJackson’s Island, “like a steamboatwithout any lights.” Huck lands andconceals his canoe. In the darkness, hesees a raft go by the island and hears aman on the raft shout commands tosomeone onboard with him. Huckgoes into the woods to get some sleepbefore breakfast.

Huck at last stages his escape intofreedom. The place he lands, Jackson’sIsland, is hospitable to him, as asteamboat is hospitable, but is notfunctional as society is, and it is alsolonely for Huck. This is all indicated bythe fact that Jackson’s Island is like asteamboat without lights, lights being asign of human presence. Nature offersHuck a society consisting only of himself.

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CHAPTER 8Huck wakes and takes in hissurroundings, like a couple squirrels,Huck says, that “jabbered at me veryfriendly.” Soon Huck hears a “boom!”sound. Looking upstream, he sees aferry firing a canon, which, Huckfigures, is being done to make his owncarcass come to the river’s surface.Hungry, Huck remembers that peoplelooking for carcasses in the river putquicksilver in loaves of bread and floatthem down the river, because theyalways go right to the drowned bodyand stop there. Huck retrieves such aloaf and is pleased to learn that ittastes better than the “low-downcorn-pone” that he usually eats.

After being locked up with the hostilePap, Huck finds even squirrels to bewelcoming. However, this scene is latercontrasted with scenes in which nature isvery dangerous. Although Huck is free innature, he could not survive therewithout human society for very long. It’sironic, though, that here society providesHuck, albeit unknowingly, with betterfood to eat when he is presumed dead,than when he is alive.

Huck thinks that the Widow orparson must have prayed for a loaf ofbread to find his body, and, indeed,one did. He figures that whensomebody like the Widow or parsonprays, the prayer is answered, but thatwhen someone like him prays, theprayer goes unanswered.

Huck’s thoughts on prayer have changedby this passage: whereas before he putsno stock in prayer, here Huck comes tothink that good people’s prayers areanswered, and that bad people’s are not.He sees himself as bad, because societyhas long equated his poverty andwildness with badness, though it isobvious to readers that Huck is not badat all, revealing society’s hypocrisy.

Huck hides behind a long near theisland’s shore to observe the ferry asit passes. Many people he knows areonboard, including Pap, JudgeThatcher, and Tom Sawyer, all ofwhom are talking about Huck’s“murder.” The captain tells them toscan the shore of Jackson Island forthe corpse, and all of them do so, butnone see Huck even though he is veryclose by. The cannon is fired, and Huckimagines that, had it been loaded, theblast would have killed him. The ferrydrifts on downstream.

Huck is maybe too curious about howsociety thinks about his “murder” for hisown good. Overhearing discussionsonboard the ferry almost gets Huckwounded, after all, and he could haveeven been killed. He would do well toenjoy his freedom at a distance frompeople, at least for now.

Huck makes a tent, catches a catfishto eat, and puts in more fishing lines tocatch breakfast. He begins to feellonesome, however, and decides to goto bed. Such is his routine for the nextthree days and nights. He thinks ofhimself as the “boss” of Jackson’sIsland. One day, however, afterrunning across a snake and trying toshoot it, Huck comes across the yet-smoking ashes of a campfire. Henervously returns to his camp andhides his things. He himself hides in atree. When it gets dark, Huck paddlesto the Illinois bank of the river,prepares supper, and decides to stayput for the rest of the night.

Huck is not as free in nature as wouldmake him comfortable. He has tocontend with life-threatening dangerslike snakes, and also other people out innature, like those looking for him whocould revoke his freedom, or, even moredangerous, violent fugitives. Huck is inneed of people he can trust and who canhelp him at this point. He will experiencedifficulties impossible to overcomewithout friends.

Suddenly, Huck hears the sound ofhorses and human voices. He shovesout in his canoe and ties up back to hisold place. There he tries to get somesleep, but can’t, “for thinking.”Restless, Huck goes into the woodswith his gun, to re-find the campfireashes he discovered earlier. Thoughhe has no luck, later he does see a fire.A man is sleeping nearby: it is Jim.Huck greets him, but Jim jumps up,then falls to his knees, begging Hucknot to hurt him, for he thinks Huck is aghost. Huck succeeds in convincingJim that he is not, in fact, a ghost.Huck also finds that he is no longerlonesome having found Jim.

Just as things become desperate for him,Huck discovers a friend in Jim, withwhom he can negotiate the difficulties ofnature and of society alike. Withcharacteristic superstition, however, Jim,thinking that Huck was murdered, isafraid that Huck is a ghost.

Huck learns that Jim came toJackson’s Island the night after Huckwas allegedly killed, and that therunaway slave has been living onnothing but strawberries. Huck setsup camp and brings out his provisionsof meal, bacon, and coffee, all of whichJim thinks is done by witchcraft. Huckalso catches a catfish, which he andJim enjoy for breakfast. The two eattill they’re stuffed and laze in thegrass.

That Jim thinks that Huck summonscreature comforts by witchcraft speaksto how poorly Jim has been faring;because the target of racial oppression,Jim can’t eat as well as Huck, and socan’t fathom doing so without magicbeing the cause. Together, Huck and Jimcan live in relative peace.

If it wasn’t Huck killed in the cabin,Jim asks Huck, who was killed? Huckthen explains his escape to Jim, whopraises the plan as being worthy ofTom Sawyer himself. In turn, Huckasks Jim how he came to be onJackson’s Island. Jim, reticent at first,has Huck swear to silence, whichHuck does, and he assures Jim that hewill honor his oath even if people callhim a “low down Abolitionist.” Jimexplains that Miss Watson treatedhim poorly and often threatened tosell him to a slaveholder in NewOrleans. One night, Jim overheardMiss Watson say that, even thoughshe doesn’t want to sell him, she couldget eight hundred dollars for him, andso has decided to sell. Consequently,Jim fled, doing so by water to avoidbeing tracked by men and dogs. Heeventually swam up to Jackson’sIsland.

While it is good of Huck to swear to keepJim’s secret, it is ironic that he thinks ofbeing called an abolitionist a bad thing.Abolitionists fight for the freedom of theoppressed, which, the novel holds, isbetter than fighting to oppress. ThoughHuck doesn’t understand that now, hewill later in the novel. This section of thenovel also reveals some of the cruelties ofslavery as an institution: Miss Watson,who claims to be a Christian, valuesmoney more than she does a humanwho, in Christian belief, has an immortaland infinitely valuable soul. Jim is alsotreated cruelly, and hunted like ananimal.

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Some young birds fly by Jim and Huck.Jim says that this is a sign that it isgoing to rain, for chickens flying bysignify rain, and so, Jim figures, thesame must be the case with youngbirds. Huck makes to kill one of thebirds, but Jim stops him saying thatdoing so would be death. Jim explainsthat his father was once very sick, andone of Jim’s relatives caught a bird,and Jim’s grandma said his fatherwould die, and his father did. Jim goeson to list things that bring bad luck,like counting what one is going to eatand shaking a tablecloth aftersundown.

In the wild, Huck and Jim need to dowhatever they can to survive, butsuperstitions sometimes get in the way ofcommon-sense survivalist actions, likeJim’s superstition about birds. Huck andJim could eat the birds, but, because ofan irrational, impractical superstition,they refrain from doing so. Jim’s list ofsuperstitions reveals how arbitrarysuperstitions are.

Huck asks if there are any good-lucksigns. Jim says there are very few, andthat they’re not very useful, becausethere’s no reason to know if good luckis coming one’s way. For example, Jimsays, if you have hairy arms and a hairychest, it’s a sign that you will be rich.Huck asks Jim if he has hairy arms anda hairy chest, which Jim does. ThoughJim admits he isn’t rich now, he sayshe was once rich, recounting how helost his money speculating in livestockand a bank. But at last, Jim thinks, he isrich now, because he owns himself,and he is worth eight hundred dollars.He wishes he had that money, becausethen he “wouldn’ want no mo’.”

Here Jim reveals that underlying hissuperstition is an expectation that badluck is always around the corner, which iswell founded considering that Jim issocioeconomically and raciallyoppressed. He expects bad thingsbecause he is often afflicted with badthings. Jim also reveals here how aconcept like wealth is relative. Eventhough he is not wealthy by societalstandards, he knows that he is wealthy ifonly because he’s free. Freedom alonemakes one sufficiently rich. The conceptof Jim getting $800 for himself also,though, highlights the craziness ofanyone getting money for selling anyoneelse. Jim is worth more than $800—he’sworth an infinite amount as a humanbeing. By having Jim value himselfaccording to slavery’s terms, the novelshows how slavery makes no sense.

CHAPTER 9In the morning, Huck wants to find themiddle of the island, so he and Jim setout and find it. This place is a high hillor ridge with a cavern in its side. Jimconvinces Huck that the two of themshould hide their gear in the cavern incase people come looking for them.He also convinces Huck to hide thecanoe nearby. Having hiddeneverything, Huck and Jim eat in thecavern.

While freedom is very important to Huck,it is all the more so for Jim, who facessevere punishment if he is caught, and alife of enslavement and separation fromhis beloved family. For this reason, Jim isall the more protective of his freedomand so takes extra precautions, likehiding the gear in the cavern.

Outside, it begins to rain fiercely.Huck is very content, however, andJim points out that Huck wouldn’t bein the cavern were it not for him, thatHuck would be out in the woodsdrowning in the rain. Duringsubsequent days, Huck and Jimpaddle all over the flooded island intheir canoe. Animals abound, meekwith hunger. Jim and Huck see saw-logs drift by, but leave them for fear ofbeing discovered. Indeed, the pairnever goes out in daylight.

At the beginning of the novel, Huck isracist and has little respect for theintelligence of black people. However,Huck is forced to acknowledge his ownprejudice as Jim proves again and againthat he is just as reasonable andpractical as his white companion. Hesaved Huck from the storm, and hiscautiousness protects Huck too.

One night a two-story cabin floats by.Though Huck and Jim board the cabinthrough a window, it is too dark to seeanything, so they lash their canoe tothe cabin and wait to explore tillmorning. At dawn, the two look intothe cabin. They see furniture and whatJim identifies as a dead man, shot inthe back, whose face, Jim tells Huck, istoo “gashly” to look at. Also on thefloor of the cabin are cards, whiskybottles, black masks; and on the wallsthere are words scribbled in charcoal.Jim and Huck take some men andwomen’s clothing from the house intothe canoe, along with other supplies.Huck and Jim then shove off from thehouse, Jim lying down in the canoeand covered with a quilt to avoiddiscovery, and the pair drifts safelydownriver.

Though it is not revealed here, the corpsethat Jim discovers is that of Huck’sfather, Pap. Jim, shows a kind of parentalcare for Huck by refusing to reveal this toHuck, to protect Huck from the scene ofhis father’s brutal murder. The evidenceJim and Huck discover in the cabinsuggests that Pap was drunk, maybecheated at cards for personal gain, andwas murdered by the men whom hecheated, who wore masks to committheir crime. Pap was vicious to the end.Despite the gory scene, Huck and Jim areresourceful enough to take from thecabin what they can use.

CHAPTER 10Huck wonders who shot the deadman he and Jim discovered, and why,but Jim doesn’t tell him because “itwould fetch bad luck.” The pair findsmoney stashed in a coat, which leadsJim to speculate that the people in thehouse stole the coat; otherwise theywould have known money was in itand wouldn’t have left it. Huck wantsto discuss the dead man more, but Jimrefuses.

Jim withholds the identity of the deadman from Huck not because hesuperstitiously thinks that doingotherwise “would fetch bad luck,” but toprotect Huck. In doing so, Jim showshimself to be a caring, loving, gentle, andemotionally intelligent humanbeing—traits that slavery never grants toslaves.

In response, Huck reminds Jim ofhow, a few days earlier, Huck hadfetched a snakeskin with his barehands, which Jim thought would bringthe very worst luck. However, Hucksays, all it’s brought are the eightdollars, and, on account of that, Huckwishes he had such bad luck every day.Jim warns that the bad luck is coming.And it does. That Friday, Huck finds arattlesnake in the cavern he and Jimare hiding in and kills it, curling it upon Jim’s bed as a prank. When Jimthrows himself into bed that night,however, the dead snake’s mate isthere and bites Jim’s ankle. Huck killsthe second snake as Jim gulps downsome of Pap’s whisky, yelling in pain,his foot swelling up all the while. Jim isincapacitated for four days and nights,by the end of which Huck resolvesnever to touch a snakeskin again forfear of bad luck, nor do other thingsthat bring bad luck, like look over hisleft shoulder at the moon.

While Jim sometimes invokes hissuperstitious-ness to protect otherpeople, like Huck, Huck sometimesinvokes his superstitious-ness to relievehimself of responsibility for his actions.After all, he plays a mean prank on Jimby putting the snake in Jim’s bed, but,instead of holding himself responsible, heblames the back luck he generated bytouching the snakeskin. Also note howJim, held by slavery to be sub-human,always treats Huck kindly, while Huck,held be slavery to be superior to Jimbecause of his whiteness, plays meanpranks. The novel continues to eat awayat the idea that slavery’s categorizationof blacks is in any way accurate.

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The next morning, bored, Huck wantsto go exploring, which Jim thinks is agood idea, but he reminds Huck thathe mustn’t get caught. Huck decidesto dress up as a woman using clothesfound in the drifting cabin, an ideathat Jim praises. Huck practices actinglike a girl all day, and paddles in hiscanoe up the Illinois shore just afterdark. He lands at a town, and, afterwalking around, peeps in at a windowto see a woman, later identified asMrs. Judith Loftus, knitting. She is astranger, so Huck decides to ask herabout what he wants to know. Heknocks and reminds himself not toforget that he is pretending to be agirl.

Just as Huck likes to mix up all the foodson his plate, crossing boundaries otherswouldn’t cross because of arbitrary rules,so too is he willing to cross the boundaryof gender by dressing up and acting like agirl. It is by acting with such freedom thatHuck preserves his freedom. However,this scene foreshadows later scenes inthe novel in which dressing-up is not anexpression of freedom, but rather ameans of conning people and satisfyingone’s desire for money.

CHAPTER 11Judith answers the door and asksHuck his name and where’s he’s from.Huck lies to the woman, giving a girl’sname. The woman is hospitable, andshe begins to talk about herself andthe goings-on in town, includingHuck’s alleged murder. She says somepeople think that Pap murdered Huck,while others think that Jim murderedHuck. There is a reward for thecapture of either. In fact, the woman’shusband went to Jackson’s Island tohunt for Jim, which makes Huck veryuneasy. The woman begins to look atHuck curiously. She asks Huck’s nameagain, and Huck accidentally gives adifferent name from what he gave atfirst. The woman points out as much,so Huck comes up with another lie toaccount for his self-contradiction,wishing very badly to leave.

Huck is very good at lying and, thoughonce in a while he contradicts himself, aswhen he identifies himself to Judith bytwo different names, his fibs are ofteneffective. This is because Huck has anuncanny ability to put himself in otherpeople’s shoes and imagine what lifewould be like from perspectives otherthan his own. That being said, Huckdoesn’t lie for pleasure or even profit, butonly practical reasons, as when he lies toJudith to get information so that he canprotect his and Jim’s freedom.

Judith then tells Huck how hard timesare for her and her family, how poorthey are and how the rats “was as freeas if they owned the place.” She’s right:there are rats everywhere. Thewoman shows lump of lead she usesto throw at rats and kill them. Afterthrowing the lump, she invites Huck todo so. Huck throws the lump verywell. Having retrieved the lump, andafter talking for a bit, the womandrops the lump of lead in Huck’s lap.Huck claps his legs around the fallinglump. The woman asks Huck, again,for his real name. She reveals that sheknows he’s a boy, but promises not tohurt him or tell on him, thinking him arunaway apprentice whose mastertreated him badly. Huck plays alongwith the woman’s assumption, lyingmore.

Ms. Loftus reveals herself to be as cleveras Huck in exposing Huck’s real identity,and also moral in protecting Huck fromwhat she thinks is his master’s cruelty. Ofcourse, she is really protecting Huck froma much more desperate condition, theloss of his freedom. It is sad that,although Judith is among the most moralcharacters in the novel, Huck does nottrust her enough to give her his realname, reflecting his deep lack of trust inother people, which itself originates fromHuck’s bad experiences with a brokensociety and people like the murderousPap.

Judith gives Huck a snack and someadvice. She tells him to remember hisname next time, that he plays a girlpoorly, though he might be able to foolmen, and she gives him some pointerson acting like a girl. Judith also tellshim to contact her if he gets into anytrouble. Huck leaves Judith’s house,returns to his canoe, and paddles backto Jackson’s Island, where he tells Jimthat people are hunting them. The pairrushes to load the raft and silentlypaddles into the darkness of the river.

Judith is very much like Huck, onlyfemale and more mature. She evencoaches Huck in how to be better thanhe is in crossing boundaries, how toimagine what it’s like to be a womaneven more vividly than he already does.While respecting Huck’s freedom, Judithalso offers Huck a helping hand, whichno other adult figure save Jim does forHuck in the novel.

CHAPTER 12Huck and Jim drift away fromJackson’s Island, undiscovered by themen looking for them. At dawn, theytie up their raft on the Illinois side ofthe river and hide it, lying low there allday while Huck recounts what Mrs.Judith Loftus told him. Come dark,Jim builds a wigwam on the raft, inwhich a fire can safely be built. Bynight, the pair drifts downriver on theraft, passing silent cities like St.Petersburg and St. Louis as they go,the inhabitants of which are all asleep.

To remain free from their pursuers, Huckand Jim have to impose rules onthemselves, like not lighting fires save forin the wigwam and only travelling bynight. Freedom isn’t so much an absenceof rules here, as self-reliance anddiscipline. Huck and Jim are alsouncannily distant from society: whileothers sleep, they are awake.

At nights, Huck goes into town to buyprovisions and supplies. In themornings, he slips into cornfields to“borrow,” that is, steal produce. Hucksays that Pap told him that it wasn’tharmful to “borrow” things if youmean to pay for them eventually, butthe Widow told Huck that such“borrowing” is really just stealing.Huck and Jim discuss this andconsequently decide not steal anymore crabapples or persimmons.Nevertheless, Huck says that he andJim “lived pretty high.”

Huck and Jim have the perfect freedomto choose which moral system they willsubscribe to: Pap’s, which is convenientbut harmful to others, or the Widow’s,which imposes hardships on Huck andJim but not on others. The two,committed to the well being of others,freely decide not to steal—and still livewell! One can be free and good at once.

One night during a storm, Huck andJim see a wrecked steamboat. Huckwants to board it and have an“adventure,” in the spirit of TomSawyer, but Jim “was dead against it.”Huck, however, convinces a reluctantJim to go against his better judgment,supposing that the pair will findvaluable things onboard the boat.

Even though Huck is morally maturing,under Tom’s influence he is still childishwhen it comes to balancing costs andbenefits. He thinks endangering himselfand Jim is worth potential profits. Jimknows better, but goes with the willfulHuck to protect him.

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Once onboard the steamboat, Huckand Jim realize that they’re not alone.They hear voices, one of a manpleading for his life, the other two ofmen planning to kill the man in orderto protect themselves, because theythink he will betray them to the Statefor having broken the law. Huckeavesdrops as the two men decide notto shoot the man, but rather to escapethe steamboat and let the third mandrown in it as the storm raises thewater level of the river. Killing a man,one of the two says, just “ain’t goodmorals.” As the men start out, Hucktells Jim to make for the raft that islashed to the steamboat. But, whenJim does so, he discovers that the rafthas broken loose, stranding him andHuck.

In contrast to Tom’s make-believe gang ofchildren, the gang Jim and Huckencounters on the doomed steamboatare very real, vicious, andmurderous—but, like Tom’s Gang, thisone is just as arbitrary in its moral code.It is ironic that one of the thieves refusesto shoot a man, but is willing to let a mandrown. This thief seems to want toexcuse himself from the guilt of murder,even though his action here has the sameeffect as murder. His rule is absurd.

CHAPTER 13Terrified, Huck and Jim search for theskiff the men used to reach the wreck,at long last finding it. Just as they do,one of the three men pokes his headout of a door mere feet away fromHuck. But the man doesn’t see him inthe dark. After the man goes backwith his partner into the steamboat,Huck and Jim make a break for theskiff, jump in, and cut it loose. Theydrift in silence.

In this suspenseful scene, it is bad luckthat one of the three men aboard theboat almost discovers Huck and Jim, butgood luck that he doesn’t. Fortuneschange like this all the time in the novel,which points to the silliness of Huck andJim’s superstitious beliefs that centeronly on bad luck.

Huck realizes it must be dreadful tobe in the position the robber-murderers are in, trapped on thesteamboat without any means ofescape. After all, he figures that hehimself might become a murderer oneday, and then, he says, “how would Ilike it?” He thinks of ways to save themurderers from the steamboat, butthe storm threatens to make anyrescue impossible.

Whereas someone like Miss Watsonwould condemn the robbers, Huck’smoral system, not conforming tosociety’s, is based more on an elasticempathy. He is imaginatively free enoughto truly do unto others as he would havedone unto him, and is not afraid to puthimself into an immoral person’s shoes.

In the darkness, Huck and Jim spottheir unmanned raft and paddletowards it. Upon reaching it, Jimboards, and Huck tells him to signalwith a light when he has floated twomiles so that Huck, in the skiff, canmeet up with him. Soon afterward, asHuck paddles toward Jim’s light, Hucksees a village on the shore. Afterarriving there, he lies to a watchman,telling him that “pap, and mam, and sis,and Miss Hooker” are up the river in awrecked steamboat, in dire trouble.The watchmen refuses to help, at first,but then paddles top help once Hucklies that the watchman will be paid forrescuing them.

Huck’s lies are often self-serving, but herehe lies on behalf of the robber-murderers,in order to save them. Huck lies becausehe thinks that if he were to tell the truth,the watchman wouldn’t help the peopledrowning upstream. The robbers wouldlet their companion drown; society wouldlet all the robbers drown. Huck wouldalways prevent people from drowning ifat all possible.

Huck feels good about going to somuch trouble to save the gang in thesteamboat. He thinks that the Widowwould be proud of him, because“rapscallions and dead beats is thekind the widow and good people takesthe most interest in.” Before long, thewreck is towed by the watchman’sferryboat to the village. Huck, heavy-hearted, realizes that all the robbersmust have died. He shoves off and, atlast, rejoins Jim, on an island, wherethe pair “turned in and slept like deadpeople.”

Huck thinks that, to be truly good, onemust take an interest in marginalizedand misguided peoples. Note how it isafter realizing that the robbers musthave drowned that Huck sleeps like adead person himself, both because he isexhausted, but also because he is, maybesubconsciously, experiencing what it islike to be dead, taking the ultimatesympathetic interest in the robbers.

CHAPTER 14The next day, Huck and Jim enjoy thethings they found in the robbers’ skiff,and Huck describes the night beforeas an “adventure.” But Jim says hedoesn’t want any more adventures,because he could have easily drownedor been captured and returned toslavery. Huck concludes Jim has “anuncommon level head” for a blackperson.

Jim’s realist interpretation of the night’sevents convinces Huck that avoidingdangers in the future is reasonable. Thisis a maturation in terms of hispragmatism, but also in his regard forJim, whose intelligence he prejudiciallydismissed before.

Huck reads to Jim about kings andnoblemen. Huck explains that kingsget whatever they want and go to warand “hang round the harem” wherethey keep their multiple wives. Huckand Jim then discuss King Solomon,whom Jim accuses of being a fool forwanting to chop a baby in two. Hucktells Jim he’s missed the point, but Jimsays the deeper point is this: that aman with few children thinks ofchildren as precious, but a man withmany children, like Solomon, thinks ofchildren as being expendable as cats.Huck thinks that Jim is beingstubborn, but changes the subject toother kings.

In addition to foreshadowing Huck andJim’s adventures with the duke and king,this passage provides Jim’s critique ofwealth as expressed in his critique ofSolomon: he thinks that people with littlecherish what they have all the more,whereas those with surplus devalue whatthey have. In addition, Jim here criticizesa Biblical hero as being a fool on thegrounds that he is not caring enough, andwhile Jim may be missing the point he isalso not entirely wrong, either.

Huck tells Jim about Louis XVI and hisyoung son, who was jailed after hisfather’s execution. Jim feels sorry forthe little prince, and Huck replies thatsome people think he escaped andcame to America. Jim is pleased, butimagines that he must be lonely, giventhat there are no other kings inAmerica. Huck says that the princecould join the police force or teachFrench. Jim doesn’t understand: don’tall people speak the same language, heasks. Huck says no, and gives anargument for why that is so, but Jimpokes a hole in the argument, suchthat Huck is forced to conclude, “Itwarn’t no use wasting words.” BothHuck and Jim fall silent.

Europe is represented here as a place offeudal brutality; America, as a refuge forthe free, like the prince. Huck is right, ofcourse, that not all people speak thesame language, but Jim poses a validlogical argument to which Huck can’trespond, indicating that while Jim maybe ignorant about the world hisreasoning ability is at least Huck’s equal.When Huck says he won’t waste wordsresponding, it’s both because he doesn’thave a response and because, though hethinks Jim reasonable, he is stillprejudicially dismissive of Jim.

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CHAPTER 15Huck and Jim judge that they arethree days out of Cairo, near the OhioRiver. The pair plans to take asteamboat up the Ohio into the freeStates, where slavery is illegal and Jimcan no longer be hunted. But a fogsets in, limiting Huck and Jim’svisibility. With Huck in the canoe andJim in the raft, the two becomeseparated, and Huck becomes lost.Huck hears whooping sounds, andthinking them Jim’s signal, he whoopsback, but to no avail. Huck continuesto drift, “lonesome,” and, at somepoint, takes a nap. When he wakes,Huck realizes how big the river isbefore spotting the raft in thedistance. Huck and Jim reunite.

The free States are Jim’s beacon of hopeas a place the laws of which preserve hisfreedom. They are also a symbol in thenovel for freedom generally. However, ata crucial juncture, it is not slave-hunters,for example, who impede Huck and Jimprogress to freedom, but rather nature,specifically the fog that separates Huckfrom Jim. Even though nature is notpersecutory like society is, it is random,indifferent to human desires, andsometimes, as here, dangerous.

Huck asks Jim if he fell asleep andwhy Jim didn’t think to wake him. Jimsays he is just grateful that Huckdidn’t drown. Huck asks Jim if he’sbeen drinking, to which Jim, takenaback, responds that he hasn’t. Hucktells Jim that he must have beendreaming that the pair was separated,indeed, that there was any fog at all.Jim can’t believe it; he sits quietly forfive minutes. At last he tells Huck hemust have been dreaming, but that itwas the most powerful, vivid dreamhe’d ever had.

Huck has tricked Jim before, but notabout something so important as this.That he is inclined to trick Jim at alldemonstrates Huck’s childishness, but italso demonstrates, more problematically,Huck’s callousness toward Jim, maybethe product of his belief that Jim isracially inferior to him. Huck doesn’t yetfully empathize with Jim.

Huck requests that Jim tell him allabout his dream, which Jim proceedsto do. Jim even interprets the dream,saying that the whoops are warningsof bad luck, the tow-heads aretroubles the pair is going to get intowith mean people unless the two mindtheir own business, and that the riverclear of fog is the free States.

Even though the fog occurred randomlyand without malice, Huck’s lie, that Jimdreamed the fog, encourages Jim to thinkof it within a superstitious interpretiveframework, not as random andmeaningless but as meaningful.

Huck then asks what the leaves andrubbish on the raft mean, along withits broken oar. Jim realizes that Huckwas tricking him all along. Jim hadn’tbeen dreaming at all. He and Huckreally were separated, and there reallywas fog. Jim tells Huck that he washeart-broken thinking that Huck haddied in the fog, and that he had criedand wanted to kiss Huck’s foot to seehim safe and sound again. And Huckcould only think about making a foolout of Jim with a lie and shaming him.When he hears all this, Huck is himselfashamed. At last, after workinghimself up to humble himself to ablack person, Huck apologizes to Jim,and feels no regret.

Jim is angry at Huck not for lying, but forfailing to imagine the consequences ofhis lies, and, more generally, for failing toimagine how he (Jim) experiences theworld. Jim was worried to death forHuck, even like a family member wouldworry, but Huck can’t imagine that andsees only a cheap opportunity to trickJim in the style of Tom Sawyer. But afterJim expresses how much he worried overHuck, Huck realizes how calloused he’sbeen, and, as he will later in the novel toan even greater extent, he treats Jim likethe equal that he is. That Huck feels noregret for apologizing shows hiswillingness to cross the slave/whitedivide and to see Jim as a true humanbeing.

CHAPTER 16Huck and Jim continue their journeyto Cairo, and, as they approach it, Jimtrembles and is feverish with thethought of being so close to hisfreedom. Huck begins to tremble andfeel feverish too, because heacknowledges that he is helping Jim toliberate himself. Huck’s conscience istroubled by this; it tells Huck that heshould have told someone that Jimwas running away, that he is meanlywronging Miss Watson, who has donenothing to harm him, by helping Jim,her property. Huck feels so mean andmiserable that he wishes he weredead.

Huck has no control over his conscience,conditioned by society. It makes itselfknown to him not with a reasonedargument but a bodily symptom ofsickness, and, as such, Huck can’t reasonwith himself to figure out what course ofaction he should take. Instead, at leastfor now, he can only do what consciencecompels him to do. In relation toconscience, then, Huck is not free,though he will grow into such a freedom.

Restless and fidgety like Huck, Jimtalks about what he will do when he isfree, how he will work and save moneyso that he can buy his wife and twochildren out of slavery, or, if theowners of his wife and children won’tsell, how he would enlist the help ofabolitionists to “steal them.” Huck ismortified to hear Jim speak this way,about stealing his children, whobelong, Huck thinks, to “a man thathadn’t ever done me no harm.” Huck issorry to hear Jim lower himself in thisway. He resolves to turn Jim in.

Jim’s course of action is veryreasonable—he wants to liberate hisfamily from unjust bondage—but Huck,in the throes of his Southern slave-owning conscience, can’s understand thelogic of Jim wanting to free his family nomatter which way, and does not see asridiculous that Jim’s family shouldbelong more to their master than to Jim.The slave-owner may never have harmedHuck, but he has harmed his slavessimply by owning them.

Jim spots in the distance what hethinks is Cairo. Huck volunteers topaddle over and see if it is, with theintent of turning Jim in. As he does, askiff comes along, aboard which aretwo armed men. They tell Huck thatthey’re hunting five runaway slaves,and ask Huck if there are any peopleaboard his raft, and, if so, whetherthey’re white or black. Huckdesperately wants to tell them aboutJim, but the words won’t come out ofhis mouth. At last, Huck lies: he saysthe man aboard his raft is white. Themen say they’ll see for themselves.Huck tells them he wishes they would,because, he lies, the white man on theraft is his father, who’s sick, along withhis mother and Mary Ann, also aboardthe raft. As the men paddle toinvestigate, Huck let’s on that theillness that afflicts his family is bothcontagious and dangerous: smallpox.As soon as Huck does so, the menrefuse to get anywhere near the raft,apologize to Huck, give him money,and paddle away.

Even though his conscience tells Huck toturn Jim in, Huck has an even strongerethical force at work in him, one thatliterally prevents him from producinglanguage to turn Jim in. If conscience isconditioned by society, this strongerethical force in Huck is deeply personal,and, as such, it is not riddled withhypocrisies as conscience is. Huck’s lie tothe men, which ultimately saves Jimfrom discovery, is an action moreexpressive of Huck’s personality than anyother he could have made. Note that theslave-hunters Huck talks to are notvicious: they do the best they can to helpHuck’s made-up sick family withoutfutilely endangering themselves. It’s clearthat their hunt for Jim is conscience-motivated, not vice-motivated. It’s justthat a society that accepts slavery asokay is, by necessity, turning even goodmen into hypocrites.

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Huck feels bad and low when hereturns to the raft, but reasons that hewould feel just as bad had he done“right” and turned Jim in. He figures itis easier to do wrong than right, andthat the outcome of doing either is thesame, and so decides to “always dowhichever come handiest at the time.”Jim finds Huck hiding in the river,holding onto the raft. Jim praisesHuck for his clever deception of thetwo men.

Given that Huck would feel badregardless of what course of action hepursued, he realizes that conscience isnot a firm means of determining what isright. He therefore endorses an ethic ofhandiness: whatever his heart tells himto do instinctually, Huck resolves to do.He is free, in this way, to be himself, andby following his heart, his compassion,Huck’s actions will show the depravity ofthe moral rules that dominate Southernsociety because of its embrace of racism.

Huck and Jim resume their journey,passing two towns, only to find outthat neither are Cairo. Huck tells Jimthat the two of them must havepassed by Cairo when lost in the fognights earlier. Jim doesn’t want to talkabout and blames the rattlesnake skinfor their bad luck, a judgment withwhich Huck agrees.

Despite how excited Jim was to reach thefree states, he gracefully accepts the badnews that he and Huck have passedCairo. This may well be because of hissuperstitions: instead of blamingsomebody for bad luck, he just moves on.

Huck and Jim learn they have reachedthe muddy Missouri River, and figurethat Cairo is upstream. They decide tocanoe there after resting. But whenthey return to where they left the raftand canoe, they find that the canoe ismissing. They are forced to raftdownriver till they reach a placewhere they can buy a canoe. As theydrift, a steamboat comes at them full-speed. Huck supposes that the captainis playing a kind of game of getting asclose to the raft as he can withouttouching it. But the steamboat keepscoming; a bell rings and men yell andcuss at Huck and Jim to get out of theway At last, the steamboat crashesinto the raft, throwing the pairoverboard. Huck swims ashore andfinds himself before a house, beforebarking dogs swarm him. Huck knowsbetter than to move.

Huck and Jim live in a world that doesn’tseem to have a bottom on bad luck. Thepair seem to be in a rough spot aftermissing Cairo, but that doesn’t evencompare to the bad luck of losing theircanoe, and what’s worst of all, the badluck of their random collision with thesteamboat. We might wonder, though: isit childish of Huck to think thesteamboat captain is playing a game,however, or merely optimistic? Or maybeHuck has seen captains play such gamesbefore? Whatever the case, after thistense scene, Huck and Jim are onceagain on their own.

CHAPTER 17A man, speaking out of a window intothe darkness, commands the dogs tohush and asks, “Who’s there?” Hucksays that he’s George Jackson, only aboy. The man asks if Huck knows theShepherdsons. Huck says that hedoes not, but the man remainsskeptical. Nevertheless, he invitesHuck into the house, but tells himthat, if anybody is with him, Huckbetter tell them to stay back lest theybe shot. Huck slowly approaches andenters the house, greeted by a family,the Grangerfords, some of whom arearmed. All of them agree, though, thatHuck is not a Shepherdson.

As a rule, Huck, however receptive andempathetic, distrusts the people hemeets on his travels, giving false namesas a matter of course. But, as this scenemakes clear, it’s not only Huck who isdistrustful: the Grangerford who invitesHuck into his home is skeptical of Hucktoo. While it is good of the Grangerfordsto overcome their distrust, it is also sadthat their society is structured in such away as to engender such distrust at all.

The Grangerfords are welcoming andfriendly and provide Huck with a meal,clothes, and a place to stay. The boywho lends Huck clothes, Buck, isabout as old as Huck is. He boasts thatif there had really been Shepherdsonsoutside, he would have killed one. Hisfather tells Buck that he’ll get hischance to do just that, but all in goodtime. After changing into dry clothesand speaking with Buck, Huck goesdown into the parlor to find theGrangerfords smoking and talking. Heeats and talks with them. The familyassures Huck that he can stay withthem for as long as he likes.

Buck is like Huck in almost every way,even in the sound of their names, exceptfor the fact that he is embroiled in aninherited family feud. While theGrangerfords seem good, that theyoungest of them should be so bloody inhis thoughts is shocking. Of course, Buckcannot be held accountable for hisinvolvement in the feud. As Huck washarmed by his father, so too is Buckharmed by his, though in a subtler way.

Huck admires the Grangerford’shome, many of the features of which,like the brass doorknob and the brick-bottomed fireplace, are morecharacteristic of a house in town thanin the country. Huck also admires thefamily’s collection of books, whichincludes classics like Pilgrim’s Progress,which Huck finds “interesting” but“tough.” Hanging on the parlor wallsare pictures depicting people andscenes from Revolutionary America,like George Washington and thesigning of the Declaration ofIndependence.

Huck and Pap’s household is contrastedwith the Grangerford household:whereas the former is characterized bylaziness and meanness, the latter is civil,literate, and historically conscious.Despite all their cultivation, however, theGrangerfords are still hypocriticallyengaged in a barbaric feud with theShepherdson family.

Also hanging on the walls are picturespainted by a member of theGrangerford family, Emmeline, a littlegirl who died young, all of which aredark in theme and color. Hermasterpiece is of a woman preparingto jump from a bridge, but Huckthinks the woman looks too “spidery.”Emmeline also wrote poetry about thedeaths of men, women, and children;for example, a ballad for a boy whodrowned in a well. Huck likesEmmeline’s art, and even tries to paytribute to her with a poem of his own,but he proves unable to write one.Emmeline’s room, Huck says, is keptthe same as it was on the day she died.

If Huck is a vital realist in his speech andactions, Emmeline is a morbid romantic,whose imagination is as grandiose asTom Sawyer’s, but much darker. Could itbe the case, though, that her art is aboutdeath only because it is a classicalartistic subject? The literary form atwhich Huck is most at home is the novel,which, unlike Emmeline’s poems, isstuffed to the brim with life.

CHAPTER 18Huck regards Mr. Grangerford, who isthe least frivolous of men, as being agentleman, well-bred, dignified, a joy,but also the stern peace-keeper of thehousehold if need be, though there isseldom the need. This is because all ofthe Grangerfords are respectful andgood-spirited. The older sons of Mr.Grangerford are “tall” and “beautiful”in Huck’s estimation. One afternoon,they toast their parents along withHuck and Buck. The Grangerfordwomen are all beautiful too, oneproud, grand, but good, anothergentle as a dove. Three Grangerfordsons have died, along with Emmeline.

Mr. Grangerford is a foil to Pap. WherePap is debauched and murderous towardeven his own son, Mr. Grangerford isdignified and beloved, even in his juststernness. He is the kind of man who, wethink, should be most self-reliant andself-governed. But, just like Pap, Mr.Grangerford is swept up by societaldictates to endanger his family in theirfeud with the Shepherdsons. That hischildren are so good and beautiful justshows how much he stands to lose.

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Huck observes that many slaves servethe Grangerford family, eachGrangerford being tended to by oneslave. Huck himself has a slave to tendto him while staying at theGrangerford home, though, becauseHuck is not used to being served, hedoes not give his slave much work todo, while Buck, in contrast, works hisslave very hard. Mr. Grangerford,Huck learns, owns many farms andover a hundred slaves, and it is byprofiting from his slave-worked farmsthat Mr. Grangerford has amassed hiswealth.

Just as the Grangerford-Shepherdsonfeud is hypocritical, so too is ithypocritical that a person as cultivatedand seemingly good as Mr. Grangerfordshould own slaves. Indeed, the means ofhis and his family’s cultivation is built onslave labor. Buck may have read Bunyan,but he has learned from his father thatowning and being cruel to slaves is amatter of course.

Huck learns that there is anotheraristocratic family living nearby: theShepherdsons, as proud and grand asthe Grangerfords. One day, as Huckand Buck are hunting, a Shepherdsonnamed Harney rides by. Buck tellsHuck to jump into the woods andHuck does so. Buck fires a shot atHarney, but only manages to knock hishat off. Harney rides toward wherethe boys are, gun in hand, but they runas fast as they can, not stopping tillthey reach the Grangerford home. Mr.Grangerford is pleased to hear thisstory recounted. However, he tellsBuck that he does not want him toshoot Shepherdsons from behind abush, but that he should jump into themiddle of the road next time to shoot.

This passage introduces theShepherdson family, who are in bloodyconflict with the Grangerfords. Mr.Grangerford implies that the feud iswaged for the sake of honor, which isbestowed by society on its members, likehow Miss Watson imposes her values onHuck. Though seeking honor isdangerous, even fatal, Mr. Grangerfordencourages Buck to seek it. Honor, itwould seem, is more important to theGrangerfords than life itself.

Huck asks Buck why he wanted to killHarney. Buck says he doesn’t have areason, that Harney never didanything to him, but “it’s on account ofthe feud” that he would have killedhim. Huck has never heard of a feud.Buck explains that it’s when one twofamilies fight till everybody’s dead,and then there’s no more feud. Buckexplains that many Grangerfords andShepherdsons have died in the feud,and many have been wounded. Heexplains how, just this year, an oldShepherdson rode down and killed ayoung Grangerford, only to be killedhimself a week later. Huck says the oldman must be a coward, but Buck saysthere isn’t a coward in either of thetwo feuding families.

Like a miniature Civil War, theGrangerford-Shepherdson feud has costmany lives, and Buck himself casuallysupposes that it will end only wheneverybody involved has been killed,which only shows how pointless thebloodshed is. More than that, Buckdoesn’t even know what the feud isabout; he has pitifully inherited his bleakbloody fate from the society he lives in.What makes the feud all the morepathetic is Buck’s insistence that allinvolved are rather heroic. So many goodpeople are killing one another, and all fornothing.

Huck goes to church with theGrangerfords and listens to a sermonabout brotherly love, which he findstiring but which the Grangerfordsdiscuss approvingly at length. Afterchurch, Miss Sophia, a Grangerfordgirl, asks Huck into her room. There,she asks him to do her a favor and nottell anybody, which Huck agrees to do.Miss Sophia tells Huck to retrieve hercopy of the New Testament from thechurch. As Huck enters the church, henotices many hogs resting on the coolfloor. He observes that, while peoplego to church only when they have to,hogs go to church whenever they can.

It is ironic that the Grangerfords, who arewaging a feud of brotherly hate, approveof the sermon on brotherly love.Hypocritically, what they approve is theopposite of what they practice. In thiscase, religion could instruct theGrangerfords in leading better, happierlives, but their commitment to Christianvalues is less than their commitment tosenseless honor; or, worse, they don’teven realize that they’re hypocrites.Huck's innocent observations abouthumans and hogs in church allow Twainto drive home this charge of religioushypocrisy.

After retrieving Miss Sophia’sTestament, Huck shakes it and outfalls a note, on which is written: “Half-past two.” Huck gives the Testamentand note to Miss Sophia, who lights upwhen she reads the latter. Huckinquires as to what the note is about,but Ms. Sophia, secretively, doesn’trespond, and she sends Huck off toplay.

This scene foreshadows Miss Sophia’selopement with a Shepherdson boy. Thenote in the Testament is right at homethere: its contents give Miss Sophiainformation about meeting with herbeloved, whish is consistent with theideal of brotherly love.

Huck heads down to the river, only tonotice that the slave tending to him,Jack, is close behind him. Jack tellsHuck that, if he comes down into thenearby swamp, he (Jack) will show hima lot of water-moccasins (a kind ofsnake). Huck, though suspicious,agrees, and follows Jack through theswamp. Instead of leading Huck tosnakes, however, Jack leads him toJim, hidden on a densely vegetatedpiece of land. Jim tells Huck that theirraft survived the steamboat crash,patched up by Jim himself, and ishidden.

Right after Miss Sophia makes torendezvous with her partner, Jack, of hisown free will, and with benevolence,unites Huck with Jim. We might thinkthat Jack is eager to help Huck becausehe has not been cruel as Buck is to hisslave, and that he helps Jim because, likeJim, he also has a love for freedom. Thisscene also foreshadows Huck’s escapefrom the feud on the repaired raft withJim.

The next day, Huck notices he is alonein the Grangerford’s house. He goesoutside, where Jack tells him thatMiss Sophia has run away to marryHarney Shepherdson. All theGrangerfords are out and abouttrying to prevent the marriage. Huckruns after the Grangerfords to theriver road, where he finds mountedand armed Shepherdsons shooting atBuck and another Grangerford hiddenbehind a woodpile. Huck hides in atree and watches one of theGrangerfords shoot a Shepherdsonout of his saddle. The otherShepherdsons tend to the man, andeventually ride away. Huck calls toBuck, who begins to cry, saying thathis father and brothers are dead, andthat he wishes he had killed Harneythe day he saw him on the road.

Like Romeo and Juliet, Miss Sophia andHarney come from feuding families butlove one another nonetheless. Theirfamilies try to put an end to their love forno reason other than the feud, as if toprotect the family name, but all theiractions to that end only consume thefamilies themselves in senselessbloodshed. Most of the maleGrangerfords are wiped out, Buckbecomes personally embittered towardsthe Shepherdsons, and it seems that hewas right when he said that the feud willbe over only when everybody’s dead.

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The Shepherdsons ride back andshoot at Buck and the otherGrangerford boy. Wounded, the twoboys jump into the river. Huck feels sosick he almost falls out of his tree. Heregrets, he says, ever having seensuch things, and dreams about themoften. After dark, Huck climbs out ofhis tree and vows never to return tothe Grangerford house. He feels guiltyfor having ignited the day’s violenceby not telling anybody about the notein Miss Sophia’s Testament, which hefigures must have meant that MissSophia was to meet Harney at thetime specified. As Huck creeps alongthe riverbank, crying, he finds twodead bodies, one of them Buck’s. Huckcovers their faces, thinking how goodBuck was to him.

Even though Huck hates the mindlessviolence he witnesses to the point that hefeels sick, and the part of human naturethat gives rise to such violence, he onlydoes so because he has such a deep lovefor human goodness, like Buck’s asexpressed before his tragic, senselessdeath. It is difficult to keep in mind, also,that Huck is just a boy, yet he feels asthough he’s bearing the weight of somany deaths for not exposing MissSophia’s elopement with Harney. Huckgrows from this experience, however: inthe future, instead of even consideringidealist solutions to problems, he willmore and more privilege practicalconsequences.

Huck goes to where Jim is hiding. Jimis so glad to see Huck that he hugshim. Huck tells Jim to lose no time inshoving the raft off into the river sothat the pair can leave the violenceand danger of the feud behind them.Huck is nervous until he and Jim drifttwo miles away from where theGrangerfords and Shepherdsons live,at which point he feels safe, and heand Jim share a meal. Huck meditatesthat all homes seem “cramped up andsmothery” except for a raft, aboardwhich “you feel mighty free and easyand comfortable.”

Even though the Grangerfords were awelcoming surrogate family to Huck,their lives were so cramped up with theirmindless feud that no one could feel freein their company. Indeed, it is only on theraft, on the wide-open river, in thecompany of his surrogate father Jim, soto speak, that Huck can feel free andcomfortable at all.

CHAPTER 19One morning, while canoeing througha creek in search of berries, Huckencounters two men running,pleading with Huck to let them on hiscanoe, begging for their lives. Hucktells the men not to jump into the boatbut to run through the bushes andthen wade through the creek beforefinally meeting up with him later, tothrow the pursuing dogs off theirscent. The men do so.

This scene recalls the earlier scene inwhich Huck and Jim flee from the slave-hunters who have arrived at Jackson’sIsland. And, indeed, Huck’s sharedexperience with these men might be oneof the motives he has for helping them tosecure their freedom.

After meeting up with the two men,Huck learns that the older one gotinto trouble for selling “an article totake tartar off the teeth,” while theother, younger, one for running areligious “temperance revival” againstdrinking alcohol while, his devoteesdiscover, drinking himself. The twocon men agree to work together. Theolder one specializes in cons thatinvolve doctoring and preaching.

The con men play society against itselffor personal gain: they exploit silly trends,like oral cosmetics, as well as societalreligiosity. Unlike most people Huck hasmet, these two men are not hypocrites,even though they are liars. Indeed, insome ways they seem similar to Huckand Jim!

When the younger con man learnsthis, he bemoans the fact that he isforced to con people, having oncebeen “so high.” He claims to have beenborn the Duke of Bridgewater. Huckand Jim pity the man after he beginsto cry, and the duke tells the pair thatthey should bow when they addresshim, and do so by his official titles, andto wait on him, which Huck and Jimdo. Later, the older con man claims,also crying, that he is “the lateDuphin,” or King of France. Huck andJim begin to comfort the king as wellas the duke.

As Tom creates a miniature society withhis Gang, so too do the con men make aminiature society of the raft, withthemselves as rulers and Huck and Jimas servants. Huck and Jim opt into thisarrangement out of pity, and maybegenuine credulity on Jim’s part.

The duke becomes sour, but the kingtells him that he should cheer up. Lifeon the raft is comfortable, with plentyof food and ease. The king asks for theduke’s hand, and the duke gives it tohim. Huck and Jim immediately feelmore comfortable after theunfriendliness on the raft dissipates;for, as Huck thinks, “what you wantabove all things, on a raft, is foreverybody to be satisfied, and feelright and kind towards the others.”Indeed, even though Huck knows thatthe duke and king are con men, hedoesn’t say anything, so as to avoidconflict.

The duke gets sour at the king becausethe king managed to lie himself into ahigher rank than the duke. After Huckwitnesses the Grangerford-Shepherdsonfeud, maybe as a result of witnessing it,he becomes very wary of human conflict,actual and potential. In his ideal society,people would be kind toward oneanother. Even though he knows that theduke and king are con men, he doesn’texpose them, because they seemharmless and because exposing themmay only cause unnecessary conflict.

CHAPTER 20The duke and king ask Huck and Jim ifJim is a runaway slave. Huck says thatJim’s not and tells a lie, that he is anorphan traveling with a family slave.The pair, Huck goes on to say, has totravel at night, because so manypeople stop their raft to ask if Jim is arunaway. The duke proposes to inventa way that the four of them can travelin the daytime. Afterward, the dukeand king overhaul the wigwam on theraft and decide to sleep in Huck andJim’s beds. It begins to storm; Huckand Jim are posted as lookouts whilethe duke and king sleep.

The duke and king immediately revealthemselves to be selfish and exploitative,taking Huck and Jim’s beds and sleepingwhile Huck and Jim work. Huck doesn’ttrust them, and he lies about hisrelationship with Jim, presumably toprotect him from whatever the duke andking might have in store for him. ButHuck’s commitment to non-conflictprevents him from disobeying the dukeand king.

The next morning, the duke and kingscheme as to how to make some easymoney. They decide to put on aproduction of Shakespeare and beginto practice for a performance at thenext town they reach. Having reacheda little town down the bend, however,they’re surprised to find that no one isaround. A sick black person in towntells them that all the townspeoplehave gathered for a religious revivalcamp-meeting back in the woods. Theduke goes to a printing office in town.

Like Huck, the duke and king arefantastic performers, which requires ofthem a kind of freedom, the freedom totransform into different characters. Thetwo are also adaptable: though theydon’t find an audience to play to, theyquickly and productively change theirplans. While these are good traits,however, they can be misused, as theduke and king misuse them to selfishends.

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With Jim still on the raft and the dukeat the printing office, Huck and theking go to the meeting in the woodsand find thousands of people there. Apreacher and his congregants aresinging a hymn, and the preacher soonbegins to preach. The crowd goeswild. The king joins the preacher onthe platform and proclaims to thecongregants that he is a reformedpirate who, if given enough money, willreturn to the Indian Ocean to convertother pirates to Christianity, at lastbursting into tears. A hat is passedthrough the congregation, and theking makes eighty-seven dollars.

The king turns society on its head. Bypretending to represent its values, hereally serves what he values, which issolely his own, usually material, interest.Even though the king’s story is wildlyimprobable, the worshippers give himtheir money, maybe because they are sozealous in their faith that they fail to seethe truth before them, which Huck seesall the time: that people are nottrustworthy.

Meanwhile, the duke is in town at theprinting office, selling bills andadvertisements in, and subscriptionsto, a town newspaper, making, in total,nine and a half dollars. He also printeda wanted poster describing Jim, sothat he and the king and Huck and Jimcan travel by day; for if anyone wereto stop them concerning Jim, theycould say that they have captured himand are returning him to his owners.All agree that the duke is pretty smart.

The duke’s plan that enables him and hiscompanions to travel by day subvertslabels of freedom and enslavement asthey are established by society. It is bypretending that Jim is captured that hisfreedom can be preserved. To generalizethis, the duke and king present a way oflife in which playing along with societyenables one to be free.

That night, as Huck comes up toreplace Jim as the lookout, Jim asksHuck if he expects them to run intoany more kings on their journeys.Huck says he doesn’t, much to Jim’srelief. Jim says that two kings are badenough, drunk as they currently are.He also tells Huck that he asked theking to speak French earlier, and thatthe king told him that he had been outof his country for so long that he hadforgotten his native language.

As good and understanding as Jim is, herecognizes that the duke and king aredeeply selfish and, like Pap, debauched.That being said, Jim invests such a puretrust in people, despite knowing how badthey can be, that he accepts the con menas what they claim to be, even thoughthe king himself can’t back up his claimto be French.

CHAPTER 21The duke and king continue topractice Shakespeare. After a fewdays, the group arrives at a smalltown, where the duke posts a billadvertising his and the king’sperformance. Huck notices that thetown is dilapidated: the houses aren’tpainted, weeds grow in the gardens,and hogs loaf around everywhere. Intown, Huck overhears a conversationin which one man tries to bum tobaccooff of another.

In contrast to the Grangerford estate,which is well-kept and beautiful, thetown Huck explores in this passageseems neglected and impoverished,maybe as a legacy from its inhabitants’involvement in the Civil War. Rather thanindustriously rebuild, the people hereloaf.

By noon, many townspeople aredrinking. Huck witnesses three fights.One townsperson cries out that “oldBoggs” is riding into town, drunk,much to everyone’s excitement. Boggshas a reputation for insulting people.He even asks Huck if he’s prepared todie. Though Huck is scared, atownsperson assures Huck thatBoggs is good-natured and harmless.Boggs begins to shout for a man calledColonel Sherburn, whom he says hewill kill. People laugh and talk, that is,until Sherburn steps out of a shop andtells Boggs he is tired of his antics butwill endure it, if only till one o’clock.

Boggs is a kind of harmless Pap,debauched but non-violent. While heseems scary to Huck, one has no realneed to fear him; he is not what heseems. In contrast to Boggs is Sherburn,who is maybe the most sincere characterin the novel. He says what he means anddoes what he says. In this sense,Sherburn, in his sincerity, stands apartfrom the hypocritical society of which heis part,

Boggs continues to carry on aboutSherburn. Townspeople try to shuthim up, telling him he only has fifteenminutes till one o’clock, but to no avail.A man runs to fetch Boggs’ daughter.About five or ten minutes later, Huck,having walked down the street, seesBoggs, no longer on his horse,nervous-looking. Sherburn calls outBogg’s name, and, just as Bogg’sdaughter arrives on the scene,Sherburn shoots Bogg to death. Thetownspeople resolve to lynchSherburn.

True to his word, Sherburn toleratesBoggs’s antic till one o’clock, after whichhe murders the innocent man. He makeslaws, however unjust, and enforces themwith brutal surety. Society, in turn,resolves to enforce their law againstmurder by lynching Sherburn, but, as wewill see, society is not so firm as thefiercely constant Colonel.

CHAPTER 22The lynch mob tromps through town,scaring women and children as theygo, till they arrive at Sherburn’s home,where they tear down his fence.Sherburn calmly steps out onto theroof above his porch with a gun inhand, and is silent for a long time.Then he slowly and scornfullyaddresses the mob. He says he is safefrom them as long as it is daytime andthey are not behind him, because theyare cowards and he is a “‘man’.” He tellsthem they are not really courageousbut borrow courage from their mass.Sherburn goes back into his house andthe mob, humiliated, disperses.

Sherburn calls the mob out on theirhypocrisy, giving a psychologicalexplanation for their (false) sense ofempowerment as a group and a critiqueof their deficiencies as individuals. This isthe most persuasive analysis of society inthe novel. But its source, Sherburnhimself, has just murdered a man in coldblood. Sherburn is free, but a danger tosociety in his freedom, a dark vision ofwhat Huck could become if he follows apath of violence.

Huck goes to the circus, which hethinks splendid. A drunk manapproaches the ringmaster of thecircus and says he wants to ride ahorse, impeding the progress of thecircus such that the men in theaudience swarm to throw the drunkman out. But the ringmaster lets himride. The audience laughs save Huck,who trembles to see the drunk manendangered. But soon the drunk manstands on top of his horse and doestricks; he himself is a member of thecircus. Huck is deeply impressed.

If Sherburn reveals the mob’s cowardice,the circus reveals its audience’s cruelty.Everyone save Huck laughs at the drunkman’s endangerment, when Huck’sempathetic trembling is maybe the morehumane response to such a spectacle.But, we learn, the man is part of thecircus all along. The boundary betweenthe real and artificial is disturbinglyporous in Huck’s world.

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That night, the duke and king put ontheir performance of Shakespeare intown, but only twelve people show up,and they laugh the whole time. Theduke says that the people of Arkansasaren’t cultured enough to appreciateShakespeare, and he devises a way togive them the low comedy they want.He posts another bill in town,advertising: “THE KING’SCAMELEOPARD [giraffe] OR THEROYAL NONESUCH.” The biggest lineof the bill announces that ladies andchildren will not be admitted to seethe show.

The duke and king’s performance ofShakespeare invites comparison with thecircus: what makes the latter fun but theformer ridiculous? The circusmisrepresents itself just as the duke andking do, and the duke and king don’tendanger anyone as the circus does. Itseems that the novel concludes that TheRoyal Nonesuch is harmless enough as amoney-making scheme, and that theduke and king’s unique vice is in theirruthlessness when it comes to exploitinginnocent people.

CHAPTER 23All day the duke and king prepare fortheir performance of “The RoyalNonesuch,” rigging up a stage with acurtain and lighting. Many men are inattendance that night, and, after theduke talks the show up, the kingenters on all fours, naked, and painted“as splendid as a rainbow.” Theaudience laughs wildly, so much sothat the king performs his “capering”act three times.

Thus far, the duke and king have seemed,while vaguely seedy and selfish, harmlessenough and farcically silly, a perceptionstrengthened by the king’s ridiculousperformance, which the audience findshilarious. The duke and king seem toknow what society wants (low farce), andthey deliver.

After that, the duke thanks theaudience members and asks them tospread the word about the show. Theaudience members, however, aredissatisfied with how short the showwas. They begin to storm the stagebefore a big man jumps up on a benchand shouts that they have beencheated, yes, but that they don’t wantto be the laughing-stocks of the town.He proposes that they talk the showup to the other men in town, whichthey all proceed to do.

The men in the audience resent havingbeen defrauded, but instead of limitingthe damage the duke and king can do totheir community, they maximize it toprotect their own externally derivedsense of dignity. They know that whatthe duke and king are doing is wrong, buthypocritically become complicit in it.

The next day, the duke and king playto a full house and scam them in thesame way as they did the audiencebefore. As they eat later that night,the duke and king tell Jim and Huck tofloat the boat two miles below townand to hide it. On the third and finalnight of performing “The RoyalNonesuch,” the house is crammedagain, but Huck notices that the menin the audience all have rotten eggsand produce and dead cats hidden intheir pockets and coats. Just beforethe show is scheduled to start, theduke tells Huck to make a run for theraft. He does so, and the duke doesthe same.

The duke and king must expect that themen in the town will use the third showas a way to exact revenge against the conmen themselves; otherwise, they wouldnot know to make an escape plan for thenight of their final performance. Thetownspeople, then, are woefullypredictable in their selfishness, which theduke and king rather cunningly exploit.We can’t help but think that society hadit coming, so to speak.

Back at the raft, Huck and the dukemeet up with Jim and the king, whodidn’t even go to town for theperformance. The duke revels in howwell he and the king pulled off thescam, and mocks the townsmen forthinking that they would get the lastlaugh by throwing their eggs andcabbages and cats at the con men. Allin all, the duke and king make a littleless than five hundred dollars.

The duke’s mockery of society isreminiscent of Colonel Sherburn’scritique, though Sherburn’s centers onthe cowardice of society, whereas theduke’s centers on people’s overestimationof themselves and their cleverness. Huckmight agree with these critiques, but hewould not exploit society out ofselfishness as Sherburn and the con mendo.

Huck knows that the duke and kingare really just con men, but he doesn’tthink it would do any good to tell Jimthat, and anyway, Huck thinks, “youcouldn’t tell them from the real kind.”The next morning, Huck wakes to findJim mourning, thinking about his wifeand children. Huck realizes, eventhough it doesn’t seem natural to him,that Jim must care just as much abouthis family as white people do for theirown. Jim recounts to Huck how onetime he asked his daughter to shut thedoor and she didn’t do it but justsmiled at him. Jim slapped her, only tolearn soon after that the girl is deafand dumb. Jim doesn’t think he’ll everforgive himself for harming her.

Huck implies here that anybody whoexploits society for purposes of self-interest, from a con man to a monarch, isvillainous: social standing doesn’t reflectone’s character. For example, Jim, who isoppressively marginalized, reveals herethat he is maybe the most morallysensitive character in the novel,supremely loving of his daughter andashamed for having hurt her out ofignorance. In what is central to hisgrowth, Huck learns that blacks are justas capable of love as whites.

CHAPTER 24As the duke and king devise anothercon, Jim tells the duke that it isuncomfortable to be tied up every day.In response, the duke invents a newway for Jim to stay by himself during aday without risking capture. Hedresses Jim up in a costume for KingLear, a character in Shakespeare’s playKing Lear, and paints Jim blue. Theduke then makes a sign saying that Jimis a sick Arab. When people approachhim, Jim is to jump out and carry onand howl till they leave him be.

It is maybe surprising that a man asselfish as the duke would go out of hisway to help Jim feel more comfortable,but he nevertheless does so,demonstrating a kind of moral freedomuncommon in the novel. The duke tendsto other’s interests as long as doing soisn’t inconsistent with pursuing his owninterests.

The king, dressed in black clothes thatmake him look “swell and starchy,”rafts to a nearby town with Huck. Asthey drift in, the two run across ayoung country boy. The king says he’llgive the boy a lift and invites him onthe raft, which the boy accepts.

The king dresses in respectable black totrick people into thinking, based on hisappearance, that he is himselfrespectable. He exploits society’sovervaluation of appearance.

On the raft, the boy tells the king thathe resembles Mr. Wilks. The king liesand says that he is a reverend, andthat he is sorry if Mr. Wilks is late forsomething. The boy then reveals thatMr. Wilks’s brother Peter Wilks hasdied, and that, as he died, he wished tosee his brothers from England, theliving ones being Harvey and the deafmute William. The king asks morequestions about the Wilks family, andthe boy obliges in answering.

By tricking the boy into trusting him withhis clothes and false identity as a priest,the king exploits the boy for informationto be used in a con. In contrast to theboy’s gullibility is Huck’s gentleskepticism of everyone he meets. Huckdoesn’t care about appearances butabout substance.

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After dropping the boy off, the kingtells Huck to fetch the duke. Huckknows what the king is up to (conningthe Wilks family), but he retrieves theduke anyway. The king tells the dukeeverything the boy told him, all thewhile imitating an English accent.After hailing a yawl, the duke, king,Huck and Jim all travel to the townwhere the Wilks family lives. Therethe duke and king claim to be PeterWilks’s brothers Harvey and William.The townspeople sympathize and helpthem, while Huck thinks their con“enough to make a [person] ashamedof the human race.”

Though Huck earlier denounces the dukeand king as rapscallions, he is nowmature enough to know that none oftheir cons compare in depravity to theirdefrauding of the Wilks family, where, ina time of tragedy, the two are not onlyemotionally exploiting grieving people,but are also stealing the possessions oftwo men whose brother has just died,nothing less than everything thatremains of Peter’s life.

CHAPTER 25The duke and king, pretending to beHarvey and William Wilks, arereceived by Peter Wilks’s family,including Mary Jane, whom Huckthinks is very beautiful. When theduke and king approach Peter’s coffin,all the people gathered go quiet, andthe two con men begin to cry theireyes out, and everyone else starts tocry too. The duke and king work thecrowd, and Huck finds the situation“disgusting.”

Huck seems especially disgusted by thisscene because the duke and king are notexploiting the badness of society, as theydid with their Royal Nonesuch con, butrather its goodness, the love of people forother people. This is an important lessonfor Huck in determining how to act welland live a good life.

The king addresses the crowd, sayinghow hard it was to lose Peter and howgrateful he is to those gathered.Someone begins to play music, and theking resumes, inviting close friends ofthe family to supper that night. As theduke makes signs with his hands andgoo-goos like a baby, the king goes tothe townspeople and addressesmostly all of them by name, andinforms them about what Peter hadwritten to him.

One of the duke and king’s strategies toprotect their cover is to ingratiatethemselves with society, to make peoplelike them so that, if their integrity comesinto question, people trust their ownemotional responses rather than thefacts. The con men do so by invitingpeople to dinner, for example, andpersonally addressing them; in general,by making people feel special.

Mary Jane fetches the letter herfather left behind, and the king readsit and cries. In the letter, Peter Wilksbequeaths to his daughters his houseand three thousand dollars in gold,and, to his brothers, three thousanddollars in gold. The letter also sayswhere the gold is hidden.

The duke and king’s scam appears tohave a significant payoff: lots of gold,which in turn promises to free the dukeand king from financial worries. Theking’s tears may seem false, but couldthey also be tears of vulgar joy?

The duke and king, along with Huck,go to the cellar and find the hiddenbag full of gold, and, even thoughanybody else would be satisfied withthe mere sight of that much gold, theduke and king count it. They discoverthat there’s about four hundred dollarworth of gold missing. The two agreeto make up the deficit with their ownmoney so that, when counting the sumbefore the townspeople to prove thateverything is being done fairly, no onewill question what happened to themissing gold. The duke and king alsoagree to give their part of the treasureto Wilks’s daughters so that no onewill even suspect them of fraud.

The duke and king express their greed inseveral ways here, from counting themoney to counter-intuitively agreeing togive their part of the treasure to theWilks daughters. Of course, they do so tofurther ingratiate themselves withsociety and to gain more with that trustthan they would be able to do otherwise.The duke and king manage to makeseemingly good deeds serve selfish,wicked ends.

Upstairs before the townspeople, theduke and king announce that they aregiving what Peter seeminglybequeathed them to his daughters,because otherwise the two would feelas though they were robbing the girls.The Wilks girls hug the two con men,thinking the two their very lovinguncles. The king goes on to invite allthe townspeople to Peter’s funeralobsequies, which he mistakenly refersto as “orgies” until the duke discreetlycorrects him. The king explains heuses “orgies” instead of “obsequies”because that is the word used inEngland, based on Greek and Hebrewetymology.

The duke and king’s ploy to earn the trustof society works with devastatingefficacy, demonstrating again just howskillful the con men are at exploiting thefolly of society. When the king almostblows his cover by referring to obsequiesas “orgies,” with dark wit he covers hiserror by exploiting the language ofworldly learning, which he rightlyassumes to be over his audience’s head.

A man, Doctor Robinson, laughs inthe king’s face after he gives hisetymology of “orgies.” Thetownspeople are shocked, but theundeterred doctor goes on to accusethe king of being a fraud. Thetownspeople tell him he’s wrong, andthe Wilks girls cling to the king andbegin to cry. But Doctor Robinsontells the girls that, as their father’sfriend, he begs them to get the kingout of their house. Mary Janeresponds by giving the king Peter’s sixthousand dollars to invest on her andher sister’s behalf. Doctor Robinsontells the girls that they will regret thisday and takes his leave.

Doctor Robinson stands apart fromsociety in his learnedness and shrewdevaluation of other people. Thesequalities allow him to expose the king,but they also lend him a condescendingair that is shocking and abrasive. Eventhough the doctor is right in this case, heis not as good as earning people’s trust asthe king, and so he fails to help peoplesee the error of their ways. He wouldbetter be able to serve the greater goodwere he more empathetic.

CHAPTER 26The duke and king and Huck are allgiven rooms in the Wilks home tosleep in. Later that night, the duke andking host a supper for a group oftownspeople. The Wilks girls say thatthey have cooked poorly, but Huckthinks the food is fine and that thegirls are just fishing for compliments.

The girl’s fishing for compliments is avery minor kind of fraudulence, wherethey say one thing while thinking anotherin order to exploit those around them.The duke and king are different frommost people not in kind but degree.

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One of the Wilks girls, Joanna, whomHuck calls “the hare-lip” because sheis afflicted with that condition, asksHuck about England. Huck lies, butthe hare-lip catches him in acontradiction, which Huck just barelywriggles out of with yet more lies.Huck resumes, but gets caught inanother inconsistency, which he againwriggles out of, only to be caught inyet a third contradiction, all becausehe is forgetting his earlier lies.

Huck has been caught in lies before, butnever as frequently as this. Why he islying to protect the duke and king isstrange in the first place, though, givenhow disgusted Huck is with the two conmen. It could be that Huck contradictshimself so much here because his moremature and guilty subconscious is tryingto expose the truth.

Joanna accuses Huck of telling herlies. Huck denies the accusation,swearing on a dictionary that he hastold nothing but the truth. Joannasays she believes some of what hesays but not all. Just then, Mary Janeapproaches and tells Joanna that sheshouldn’t talk to Huck in that way,because he is a stranger far from hisnative country. Huck feels bad,because Mary Jane is so good indefending him and yet he is letting theduke and king steal her and hersisters’ money. Huck decides to returnthe money to the girls.

Mary Jane conforms too much tosocietal convention for her own good.When she should trust her sister’sintuitions, she trusts Huck blindlybecause he is a stranger far from home.But Mary Jane, as Huck sees, is alsodeeply good. Because she is a humanvictim to Huck, and not just an abstractvictim of the duke and king’s scam, Huckmaturely resolves to help her.

Huck searches the king’s room for themoney but doesn’t find it. Just thenthe duke and king enter the room.Huck hides behind a curtain andoverhears the two con men debatewhether they should stick around tosell the Wilks home or leave rightaway to avoid detection. Huck thinkshe wouldn’t have felt bad about this anhour or two ago, but that now he does.The king convinces the duke to stickaround and sell the house, becausedoing so wouldn’t harm the Wilksgirls.

Huck reflects on how he has morallymatured in just two hours: whereasbefore putting a human face to the dukeand king’s victims he would have gonealong with their scam, now he feelscompelled to expose the duke and king’swrongdoing. Note also how the king’styrannical greed, seemingly boundless,prevents him and the duke from escapingwith the money now, a costly mistake.

As they leave the room, the duke tellsthe king that they should hide themoney in another place, becauseotherwise some slave who comesupstairs to pack up Mary Jane’sbelongings might find the gold andsteal some of it. Almost discoveringHuck, the king takes the money frombehind the curtain and hides it in astraw mattress. After the duke andking leave, Huck takes the money,planning to hide it outside. Huck slips,gold in hand, down the ladder leadingfrom his room to the rest of the house.

The duke and king expose their racismwhen they suppose that a black personmight try to steal the money, when theythemselves are stealing the money! Itmust be said, though, that, while theduke and king are racists, they do notseem to be making a moral judgmentagainst black people here, but rather arejust concerned with the practical matterof keeping the money to themselves.

CHAPTER 27Huck tries to take the money outside.He makes it as far as the parlor, wherePeter Wilks’s corpse lies in its coffinand sleeping men sit around, beforehe hears footsteps coming towardhim. Huck quickly hides the money inthe open coffin and then hides himselfbehind a door. The footsteps are thoseof Mary Jane, who comes into theparlor, stands before her father’scoffin, and quietly mourns.

This scene, maybe more than any other,exemplifies Huck’s indifference to socialnorms and his commitment to fluid,practical solutions. His act of hiding themoney in the coffin is a minordesecration, a fact revealed all the morestarkly by Mary Jane’s respectful, lovingmourning. That doesn’t diminish,however, the goodness of the act.

Huck creeps back up to his room, andnight turns to day. In the afternoon,Peter Wilks’s funeral is held.Mourners walk past Wilks’s coffin,looking down, some crying. Hucknotices how often people blow theirnoses, how soft and gliding andstealthy the undertaker is, and heconcludes that Peter Wilks “was theonly one that had a good thing.” As thepreacher is speaking, a dog begins tobark. The undertaker goes outreassuringly, hits the dog till it’s silent,and comes back in. The townspeopleappreciate the undertaker’s actions;he’s a very popular man in town.

Huck, with his love of life, is disturbed byhow mawkishly miserable the mournersare, and also by the undertaker, who iscruel to a harmless dog and whosecruelty is bizarrely appreciated.Mourning seems a mere societalconvention to Huck, who is free fromsentimentality, thinking as he does thatPeter is better off than the living in thiscase because he is free from self-imposedmiseries.

After the king “got off some of hisusual rubbage” by giving anotherspeech, the undertaker seals thecoffin. Huck can’t be sure whether thebag of gold is still in there or ifsomebody took it out, and he’sworried that Mary Jane and hersisters might never get it back. Theking says he and the duke must beleaving for England, and tells theWilks girls that they’re welcome tocome. The two con men, meanwhile,are in the process of selling all of theWilks estate, house and slaves andall—they plan to keep the money fromthe sale, then leave the unlucky buyerto discover once they are gone thatthe purchase is null and void becauseit was sold by men who had no right tosell it. Huck’s heart aches to see thegirls get fooled like this, but can’t thinkof a way to safely expose the duke andking.

After ingratiating himself even more withthe townspeople by exploiting theirmawkish sadness, the king along with theduke prepares to complete the scam.Huck aches to see the girls, who are sogood, get hurt, but he is not an idealistwho would expose the con men withouthaving figured out the logistics first. Huckhas morally matured, but his sense of thepractical is a constant in his decision-making.

In selling the Wilks’s family of slaves,the king separates a mother from herchildren. The Wilks girls aredistraught at this, and, if Huck hadn’tknown that “the sale was of noaccount” and that the family of slaveswould soon be reunited, he figures hewould have had to tell on the duke andking.

In one of his cruelest, most selfish acts,the king separates a black family forprofit, just as Jim was separated from hisfamily. The Wilks girls are noblydistraught, just as Huck is, who hasmatured into recognizing that blackpeople are just people with feelings likeeveryone else.

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Later, the duke and king also questionHuck about whether he’s been in theirroom. Huck lies and says that hehasn’t, but that he did see some blackslaves go in there several times. Theduke and king are upset to learn this,thinking the slaves stole the bag ofmoney hidden in the mattress, but thetwo also know they can’t do anythingbecause the slaves have already beensold. The duke and king yell at eachother and, as they walk off, Huck isglad to have made it seem like theslaves stole the money withoutbringing harm to them.

It is hard to say whether Huck’s liereveals Huck’s own racism, that blacksare predisposed to wrongdoing, orwhether it merely exploits the duke andking’s own racist assumptions. Such aquestion does not concern Huck,however, who is just happy to havepragmatically protected his identity asthe thief and to have done so withouthurting anybody else. Huck cares aboutconsequences, not means.

CHAPTER 28Huck comes upon Mary Jane, who ispacking for her trip to England. She isalso crying because, in selling theWilks’s slaves, the duke and kingseparated a mother from her children.Moved by her tears, Huck blurts outthat the family will be reunited in twoweeks, and, thinking that in this casethe truth is better than a lie, he sayshe can prove it.

It is maybe because Huck recognizes justhow big Mary Jane’s heart is here—she iscrying out of an empathy with theslaves—that he decides to trust her withthe truth, as he trusts only Jim. Huck’strust in Mary Jane makes telling thetruth practical.

Huck reveals that the duke and kingare not Mary Jane’s uncles but rathera couple of frauds. Mary Janeindignantly wants to have the dukeand king tarred and feathered. Hucksays he would tell on the duke andking immediately except that he wouldbe endangering someone (Jim), and heproposes a different plan.

Huck has grown up enough at this pointthat he discourages Mary Jane fromimmediate action, which would beefficient and practical, in favor of acourse of action that is maybe lessefficient but more sensitive to Jim’scondition and needs.

Huck tells Mary Jane to go away,because he is afraid that she willexpress in her face knowledge of theduke and king’s fraud, which will inturn allow the two to escape. MaryJane is to return in the evening, afterHuck and Jim have made their escape,and expose the duke and king, sendingfor the townspeople of Bricksville, thesite of the performance of The RoyalNonesuch, as witnesses regarding theduke and the king's trickery. Huck alsogives Mary Jane a note explainingwhere he has hidden her bag of gold.Mary Jane promises to rememberHuck forever and pray for him, and,though Huck says he has not seenMary Jane since, he thinks of heroften.

Mary Jane has a strong sense of justice,one that in its earnestness and self-consistency strongly contrasts with thatof society at large, but it is precisely thestrength of her feeling that makes her aliability in exposing the duke and king.Unlike Huck, she does not have thefreedom of character that would enableher to dissemble, or act, as Huck does,and so she would give the duke and kinga chance to escape.

After Mary Jane lights out, Huck runsinto her sisters. Huck lies that MaryJane has gone to visit a sick person intown, and, though the girls press Huckon the facts of his story, he at lasttricks the two into not mentioninganything to the duke and king thatmight alert them to Mary Jane’sknowledge of their fraudulence.

Huck may decline to tell Mary Jane’ssisters the truth because he doesn’t trustthem sufficiently, or maybe because it ismore practical for only one sister to knowthe truth, so that there are fewer peoplewho could tip the duke and king off, evenaccidentally, that their cover has beenblown.

Later that day, the duke and king holdan auction to sell off the Wilks estate.As the auction draws to a close, asteamboat lands, and a noisy crowdapproaches, singing out that in theircompany are none other than twomen who claim to be Harvey andWilliam Wilks.

The duke and king are astonishingly ableto get away with auctioning off the Wilksestate despite the suspicion Dr. Robinsoncast on them. The townspeople are sotaken by the con men that they only testtheir assumptions when directlycontradicted.

CHAPTER 29Despite the arrival of the two menwho claim to be Harvey and WilliamWilks, the duke and king persist intheir fraudulence. After the kingcracks a joke at the real Harvey’sexpense, most of the townspeoplepresent laugh, but there a few whodon’t One of these is DoctorRobinson; another is a lawyer namedLevi Bell, who calls the king a liar.Doctor Robinson suggests that thetwo sets of men claiming to be Harveyand William be affronted with eachother at a tavern so that their realidentities can be determined

At last, when the townspeople’saffection-based trust in the duke andking is called into question by the arrivalof the real Harvey and William, thepeople society wouldn’t listen to earlier,people of reason like Doctor Robinsonand Levi Bell, are given the attention thattheir arguments merit. The townspeopleare forced into rationality the hard way.

At the tavern, Doctor Robinson asksthe king to produce the bag of gold sothat it can be kept safely till thetownspeople determine who is who.The king says that the Wilks’ slavesstole the gold, but nobody reallybelieves him. The king then tells hisstory, followed by the old manclaiming to be Harvey Wilks, andHuck thinks it’s obvious that the king’sis a liar and the old man a truth-teller.Huck, in giving his story, is interruptedby the doctor, who tells him that it isclear he is a bad liar and shouldn’tstrain himself.

It is ironic that when the king tells whathe believes to be the truth about wherethe gold is, the townspeople don’t believehim, but that when he tells what heknows to be a lie, which Huck himselfthinks very transparent, the townspeopleless readily gainsay him, suggesting howeasily mislead society is in its search forthe truth. Also, Huck has been a ratherproficient liar till now; it seems his strainto lie is due to moral qualms or having tolie about something regarding which hehas no knowledge.

Levi Bell begins to speak with theking, and eventually tricks him, theduke, and the other old man claimingto be Harvey Wilks to writesomething down. Bell then producesfrom his pocket a letter from Harvey,to find that none of the handwritinggiven him matches that of the letters.The old man explains that his brotherWilliam copies his letter, and Leviconcedes that his plan to expose thefrauds has succeeded only partially:he knows that the duke and king arefrauds, but he is unsure about theother two men.

The duke meets his match in Levi Bell,who tricks the veteran trickster intoexposing his own lies. It is strange,though, that the townspeople don’t acton the results of Mr. Bell’s test. Whereasit would be reasonable at this point to jailthe duke and king, the townspeople seemnot to have followed Mr. Bell’s logic at all,and allow the duke and king a chance toescape later. Society does not actlogically.

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The real Harvey Wilks asks the kingto reveal what is tattooed onto PeterWilks’s chest. Whitening, the king atlast says that it is a pale, blue arrow.The old man says that that’s false, thathis tattoo is really of the letters“P.B.W.” But the men who buried PeterWilks say they saw no such mark. Thetownspeople become convinced thatall four men claiming to be Peter’sbrothers are frauds, and, enraged,decide to dig up Peter’s body to see ifhe has any tattoo at all.

The king’s guess as to Peter Wilks’stattoo is, so audacious, may be whatsaves him and the duke from immediateincarceration. Again, it is ironic that thetownspeople don’t believe the realHarvey Wilks, and they are so irrationallyflammable as to denounce even him as afraud. Their search for truth is farcical atbest.

After disinterring Peter’s corpse, thetownspeople discover the bag of goldthat Huck hid in Peter’s coffin. Theman who is holding Huck by the armto prevent him from running awaylet’s go of the boy to get a look at thebag, and Huck immediately makes arun for it. He meets Jim by the river,and the two begin to drift away.Suddenly, though, Huck hears afamiliar sound, the humming of a skiff.It is the duke and king. Huck sinks tothe floor of the raft and almost criesthat the two con men are not yet outof his and Jim’s lives.

Even though Huck is helping the Wilksesexpose the duke and king, he is wiseenough to know that the townspeopleare stupidly unpredictable, so, instead oftaking his chances with the mob, hemakes a bold bid for freedom. But thatfreedom is limited by the arrival of theduke and king, whose self-interestednesshas come to metaphorically imprisonHuck and Jim in a life of fraud and closescrapes.

CHAPTER 30After the duke and king board theraft, the king shakes Huck by thecollar and asks if he was trying to givethe con men the slip. Huck says he wasafraid of being hanged and ran at thefirst chance he got. The king threatensto drown Huck, but the dukeintervenes and tells the king that hewould have done the same thing hadhe been in Huck’s shoes.

Over the course of the novel, the king hasmorphed into another Pap in Huck’s life,debauched and, now, murderous. He is apetty, stupid tyrant, whose power overHuck is restrained only by the duke, whois himself hardly a moral authority.

The king cusses the town andeverybody in it, but the duke turns onhim again and says that he should becussing himself for almost getting thetwo locked up in the penitentiary. Theduke is only grateful that the bag ofmoney was discovered in PeterWilks’s coffin, which provided anopportunity for him and the king toescape.

It is the duke who rightly identifies theprice of freedom here as the need to takeresponsibility for oneself, which the kingrefuses to do. Also, society clearly hasbackwards priorities: they allow the dukeand king to escape because they wereexcited by seeing gold to which they haveno claim.

It is the very reference to the bag ofgold that triggers an argumentbetween the duke and king over howthe money got into Peter’s coffin inthe first place, each blaming the otherfor wanting to hide the money so hecould later have it all to himself. Theking, overwhelmed and exhausted,blubberingly confesses that he hid themoney in the coffin. The duke shameshim for letting the slaves take theblame. Then the two men take solacein drinking, till they’re drunk, mellow,thick as thieves again, and literallysleeping in one another’s arms. As thetwo sleep, Huck tells Jim everythingthat’s happened.

It is hard to say why the king takesresponsibility for something he didn’t do,hiding the gold, except that maybe he isso morally exhausted that he wants totake responsibility for something,anything. The duke rather noblycondemns the king for letting the slavestake responsibility for his actions. Butjust as the duke and king seem to growout of their wicked ways, they get drunkand conspiratorial again. Like Pap, thetwo con men will always be morallystained.

CHAPTER 31Huck, Jim, and the con men driftdownriver for four days, at whichpoint the duke and king feel safeenough to resume their scams innearby villages, but they don’t havemuch luck in making money andbecome “dreadful blue and desperate.”The two whisper in private in thewigwam, which makes Huck and Jimso nervous that they resolve to leavethe company of the duke and kingonce and for all.

The duke and king’s moral epiphany isshort-lived. Mere days after the dukegives his speech in favor of takingresponsibility for oneself, he and the king,chained to their debauched lifestyle,begin scamming again. Huck and Jimworry because they know the duke andking have no qualms about harmingthem if push comes to shove.

The king goes up to a village to see ifthe people there have caught wind ofThe Royal Nonesuch. At noon, Huckand the duke, who’s been in a sourmood, set out to join the king, only tofind him in a saloon getting cussed atand threatened. The duke beginsberating the king (maybe for gettinginto such a bad situation, maybe tobuy time in formulating an escape planfrom the saloon for the two of them),at which point Huck, sensing hischance, makes his escape.

The duke, we’re later led to infer, is in asour mood because he helped the king tosell Jim back into slavery by printing ahandbill for the purpose, he presumablyfeels guilty for betraying Huck and Jim.But, ultimately, the duke values hisinterests over anyone else’s. That’s whyHuck must be free of him.

As Huck runs to the raft, he shoutswith joy to Jim that they are free. ButJim, Huck soon discovers, is gone.Huck can’t help it: he sits and cries.Soon restless, he takes to the road andcomes across a boy who tells him thatJim has been captured and taken toSilas Phelps’ farm. Huck also learnsthat it was the king who turned Jim infor forty dollars, using a handbillearlier printed by the duke.

Even though Huck is at last free of thecon men, he can’t enjoy his freedomknowing that Jim has been denied his.While it is disgusting that a human lifeshould be ascribed any monetary value,Huck notices that the duke and king soldJim out for a rather paltry sum. Theymade twice as much conning thereligious revival as they did selling Jim.

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Huck considers writing a letter toTom Sawyer asking him to tell MissWatson that Jim is at the Phelps’ farmso Jim can at least be with his family,but decides that Miss Watson wouldbe cruel to Jim for running away andthat Jim would be disgraced.Hopeless, Huck rebukes himself forhelping Jim at all, and feels low andornery. Huck prays, but no wordscome, at least not until he does whathe thinks is most moral: writing a noteto Miss Watson. But as Huckremembers Jim and how good Jim is,he pauses. At last, he rips up the note,and decides he’s going to help Jim tofreedom, even if that means going tohell. Huck never regrets his choice.

This is maybe the most importantpassage in the novel in terms of Huck’smoral development, where the boydecides that he would rather subvert allsocietal values and do what others thinkbad than do what society endorses andbetray the inclinations of his own heart.Huck thinks that betraying the humanityof good people like Jim is a worse fatethan being condemned to hell. Of course,Huck’s decision is more Christian andloving in spirit than the alternative, and itis a testament to the way that slaveryhas warped Christianity in the south thatHuck thinks that freeing a man fromslavery will send him to hell.

As Huck makes his way to save Jim, heruns into the duke. Over the course oftheir conversation, the duke tellsHuck that the king did indeed turn Jimin. The duke eventually tells Huck thatif he and Jim promise not to turn inhim or the king, he’ll tell Huck whereJim is. Huck agrees, and the dukebegins to disclose Jim’s location,when, mid-word, he changes his mindand lies to Huck about where Jim is.Huck sets out at first for the falseplace the duke gives him, and oncehe’s sure the duke is no longerwatching, Huck turns around andheads for the Phelps’ farm.

The duke printed the handbill he and theking used to turn Jim in long ago,suggesting that he had at leastentertained the possibility of betrayingJim for profit. It is ironic, then, that afterhe earlier charges the king with nottaking responsibility for himself, the dukeblames the king and only the king forselling out Jim, even though he isobviously complicit. The duke is ashypocritical as the society he exploitsand defrauds.

CHAPTER 32Huck arrives at the Phelps’ and feelslonesome, because the droning ofbugs and quivering of leaves make itfeel “like everybody’s dead and gone.”He says that, generally, such a feelingmakes a person wish he were deadtoo. As he approaches the Phelps’kitchen, he hears the wailing of aspinning wheel and wishes that hehimself were dead, thinking it the“lonesomest sound” in the world.

Huck is finally free, but has no one likeJim to enjoy his freedom with. Alone,then, he experiences freedom as ameaningless blank populated only withthe empty sounds of nature, and hewould rather be dead than exist in thatblank.

Dogs swarm around Huck, but soon aslave comes out and yells at the dogsto scram. The slave is followed by twoblack children, a white woman (AuntSally), and two white children, who,Huck notes, respond to him in thesame way the black children do. Thewhite woman welcomes Huck,thinking that he is none other than herexpected guest and nephew…a boynamed Tom. Huck plays along.

Just as Huck despairs of loneliness, he isgreeted by a microcosm of society. Henotices the fact that there is nodifference between how white childrengreet him and how black children greethim, reflecting his maturation into aknowledge of racial equality.

The woman who welcomes Huck iscalled Aunt Sally. She takes Huckinside where she questions him abouthis trip, such that Huck is forced to lieto keep his cover from being blown.Huck gets especially nervous whenAunt Sally asks him about his family,but is saved when a man, Uncle Silas,enters the room. Aunt Sally hidesHuck behind a bed and pretends asthough “Tom” hasn’t arrived yet. ButAunt Sally is playing a trick on UncleSilas: while he’s not looking, she pullsHuck out from behind the bed andintroduces him to Uncle Silas as TomSawyer.

Unlike with the Wilks girls and DoctorRobinson, Huck is again able to liefluently to Aunt Sally, maybe because hethinks his lies to be in the service of agreater good. In this scene, we also seewhere Tom Sawyer inherited his boyishlove for pranks: family members like AuntSally, who here pranks her husband. AuntSally’s prank is harmless, but, as we willsee in later chapters, Tom himself hasn’tlearned how to balance fun with otherpeoples’ well being.

Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas questionHuck, thinking him Tom, about theirrelatives, and Huck answers theirquestions with ease. As they’retalking, Huck hears a steamboatcoughing down the river. The real Tomcould be aboard, Huck thinks, and hecould accidentally blow Huck’s cover,so Huck decides to meet him. He tellsthe Phelpses that he’s going to fetchhis baggage from where he hid it, andheads out.

Note that Huck’s impersonation of Tomis similar to the duke and king’simpersonation of the Wilks brothers.Huck, however, is not exploitative as thecon men were. He even feels comfortableimpersonating Tom, suggesting that, inhis deep, empathetic knowledge of Tom,Huck is most easy and free.

CHAPTER 33As Huck walks to town, he sees awagon coming toward him, riding inwhich is Tom Sawyer. Huck stops thewagon, but Tom is afraid of Huck,thinking him a ghost. Huck tells Tomthat he isn’t, and Tom, satisfied, beginsto ask Huck about his recentadventures. Huck tells Tom that he’sat the Phelps’ farm to rescue Jim, andTom, after thinking a bit,enthusiastically decides to help Huckrescue him. That Tom would help ablack slave lowers Huck’s opinion ofhis friend, and he thinks Tom must bejoking, but Tom assures Huck that heis serious.

Tom’s first explanation for Huck’sappearance is a superstitious one, but heis mature enough to accept Huck’srational account of his adventures.Huck's reaction to Tom's willingness tohelp points again at society's hypocrisy:Huck thinks that Tom is a propermember of society, which is why hethinks less of Tom for being willing tobreak society's rules. Huck thinks ofhimself as a no-good rule-breaker, and sohe is ok with himself breaking those rules.Huck does not yet clearly see that it isthe rules themselves that are depraved.

Huck returns to the Phelps’ tooquickly after meeting Tom, but UncleSilas, whom Huck considers the“innocentest, best old soul,” and who isnot only a farmer but also a preacher,is merely pleased that his mule couldgo to town and back so quickly. Soonafter Huck, Tom arrives. He pretendsto be looking for a different house,but, after being invited by thePhelpses to dinner, he accepts.

Uncle Silas is an upstanding member ofsociety and a person whom Huckrespects very much, and yet he thinks itacceptable, even moral, to hold Jimprisoner. It’s surprising that Huck stillthinks he’s doing wrong by helping Jim,but, even so, he is much more morallyfree than Uncle Silas.

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Over dinner, Tom chats and chats,lying very fluently, and at one point hegoes so far as to kiss Aunt Sally on themouth. Aunt Sally jumps up and scoldsTom, even picking up her spinning-stick as if to thwack him with it. Tomsays that they told her to kiss her. AuntSally has no idea what Tom is talkingabout, but then he introduces himselfas Sid Sawyer, Tom’s half-brother.Aunt Sally is delighted to see him.

As Aunt Sally pranked Uncle Silas aboutTom’s arrival, so does Tom prank AuntSally. This sketch of a family shows howbehaviors and beliefs are passed fromone generation to the next, behaviors asbenign as pulling pranks, and beliefs asperniciously serious as the inferiority ofone race to another.

Later, one of the Phelps boys asksUncle Silas if he can go to “‘the show’,”but Uncle Silas says that, according tothe runaway slave (Jim) and anotherman, the show is scandalous. Huck,realizing that the show must be theduke and king’s, sneaks out of thehouse at night with Tom to warn thecon men. As they’re walking, Hucksees a mob with the duke and king“astraddle of a rail,” tarred andfeathered. Huck feels sick at howcruel people are to one another, andrealizes that he couldn’t have a hardfeeling toward the duke and king evenif he wanted to.

Despite all the wrong they did him, Hucktries to save the duke and king fromcapture, revealing his commitment tofreedom for all over even societal justice.Huck also wants to save the duke andking because he knows how disgustinglycruel people can be. Indeed, thenastiness of the punishment thetownspeople inflict on thefrauds—tarring and feathering—is acrime in itself. Huck, in his empathy,forgives the pitiful wretches.

As he and Tom walk back to the farm,Huck feels humble and somehow toblame for the duke and king’s fate,even though he knows he didn’t doanything. Huck supposes that, when itcomes to conscience, it doesn’t matterwhether we’ve done right or wrong,because our conscience will invariablymake us feel bad. Tom Sawyer, Huckobserves, says the same thing.

Huck’ s experience of the duke and king’spunishment enables him to once and forall grow out of his enslavement tosocialized conscience, which he comes tothink of as a bad gauge of whether or notwe’re actually doing right or wrong. Freeof conscience, Huck is better able tofollow the intuitions of his heart.

CHAPTER 34Tom deduces that Jim must beimprisoned in a hunt on the Phelps’property, based on the fact that aslave (Nat) goes to that hut withhuman food every day. Huck isimpressed with Tom’s reasoning, andthinks that he wouldn’t trade TomSawyer’s mind for anything. Tom andHuck begin to devise plans for helpingJim to escape.

Tom proves himself to be a rational,clever boy. Despite his powers ofdeduction, however, Tom will show thathe is dangerously impractical when itcomes to making plans, mostly becausehe is too reliant on ideas of styleinherited from his books.

Huck suggests that he and Tom bringup the raft, steal the key to Jim’s hut,and rescue Jim in the night. Tomconcedes that Huck’s plan will work,but insists that it is far too simple. Heproposes a plan which Huck doesn’texplain in his book, because, he says,Tom will just change the plan all thetime anyway, throwing in flairwhenever he can, which is exactlywhat he does. Huck still can’t believethat a respectable, well-raised, ethical,intelligent, kind boy like Tom wouldhelp to steal a slave out of bondage,and he begins to tell Tom as much, butTom hushes him and says he knowswhat he’s about.

Despite being clever, Tom foolishlydismisses Huck’s practical plan, whichwill liberate Jim soon, in favor of afancier, more romantic plan. Tom’s planmay have style, but it requires that Jimbe imprisoned for longer than is strictlynecessary. In this sense, Tom is beingrather selfish. Huck regresses again in hisdisbelief at Tom’s willingness to violatesocietal norms; we can’t help but wonderif Tom is doing so not for Jim’s sake butselfishly, for the adventure of rescuingJim.

Huck and Tom survey the Phelps’farm and think of ways to bust Jim outof the hut. Tom decides that it wouldbe grand to dig Jim out, which will takeabout a week. Huck and Tom alsofollow Nat, who brings food to the hutwhere Jim is presumably kept. Natclaims that witches have beenpestering him and also lets the boystake a look at the prisoner locked upthere, who is, as Tom deduced, noneother than Jim.

Tom’s plan is self-indulgently time-consuming. Huck is skeptical butimmaturely bows to Tom’s decision outof friendship. Nat, whom the boys ropeinto their rescue plan, is superstitious, afact that the boys will exploit to save Jim.Of course, they wouldn’t have to exploitNat at all if their plan were morepractical.

Jim greets Huck and Tom by name,which startles Nat. He asks how it isthat Jim knows who the two are. Tompretends as though he didn’t hear Jimsay anything, and Huck and Jim playalong, such that the slave is forced tobelieve that the witches made himhear things. Tom whispers to Jim thathe and Huck are going to set him free.

Even though Tom and Huck willneedlessly exploit Nat later, here it isnecessary that they do so, lest Nat learnthat Jim knows the boys, which mightcompromise the whole rescue attempt.Jim obviously thinks it necessary to trickNat as well for the sake of his freedom.

CHAPTER 35Tom is dissatisfied that liberating Jimwill be so easy. He wishes there wereguards to drug, or a guard-dog, or thatJim were better chained down. Hesighs that he and Huck will have toinvent difficulties; for he wants theescape to be as grand as one of thosecarried out in the romantic books helikes to read.

Exhibiting a subtle racism, Tom regardsJim less as a human being who needs aidand more as a prop in his adventure, onehe imaginatively and fondly drapes in yetmore chains. He has inherited societalracism, and also dangerous romanticconventions from his books.

Tom also proposes that he and Huckmake Jim a rope ladder by tearing andtying up their sheets, and that theythen bake it into a pie so it can bedelivered to Jim. Huck thinks this planis unnecessary, but Tom disagrees.Huck gives in, but cautions Tom thatAunt Sally will be greatly displeasedto find that the boys have torn up hersheets. Huck suggests that he andTom steal a sheet off of theclotheslines, and Tom agrees.

It is a sign of Huck’s vestigial immaturitythat he listens to Tom instead of his ownheart. To his credit, he tries to reasonwith Tom, but we think that Huck woulddo better to just act independently andrescue Jim as soon as he can, withoutTom’s childish insistence on making agame out of a human being’s freedom.

Tom also says that Huck should steal ashirt off the clothesline, so that Jimcan use it to keep a journal. Huckexclaims that Jim doesn’t even knowhow to write, to which Tom respondsthat Jim can at least make marks onthe shirt. He also proposes Jim begiven something like a candlestick tofile into a pen, that he use his ownblood as ink, and that he be smuggledtin plates to write little messages onbefore throwing them out of thewindow to be read. Huck thinks all thisis impractical.

Tom’s plan is as big a farce as anythingthe duke and king perpetrated, and itdevalues human life to a similar if subtlerextent. Tom has inherited a new set ofconventions from his books and madlysets about satisfying them, even ifabsurdly so, e.g., he gives Jim things towrite with even though Jim can’t write.Huck’s lack of resistance here calls intoquestion the permanence of his earliermoral development.

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That morning, Huck steals things togive Jim, as well as a watermelon fromthe slave’s watermelon patch. Tom,however, tells Huck that he can onlysteal what he needs to help set Jimfree, and he demands that Huck givethe slaves a dime without telling themthat it is in exchange for the stolenwatermelon. Huck doesn’t see whatgood it does him to represent aprisoner if it means he can’t even steala watermelon.

Ironically, nothing Tom and Huck steal isneeded to help set Jim free. Tom’sinsistence to the contrary suggests thathe is not living in the real world. It is alsodisturbingly uncharacteristic that Huckwould steal the watermelon withoutneeding it, something he hasn’t donesince he was in Pap’s care.

Finally, Tom tells Huck that they needto steal tools to dig Jim out of the hutwith. Huck asks why they don’t usesome picks and shovels the two foundearlier, but Tom says that no prisonerhas ever used picks or shovels, andthat what they need for digging areknives. Tom calculates it would take37 years to dig to Jim with knives, and,knowing that he and Huck can’t takethat long, he proposes that he andHuck pretend amongst themselvesthat it takes them 37 years to saveJim. Huck says that pretending isn’timpractical and doesn’t hurt anyone,so he agrees. Tom tells Huck to stealthree knives and, after a little protest,Huck agrees to do so.

Huck and Tom finally seem to come totheir senses and grow up a little in thisscene. Tom realizes and accepts that hisplan is impractical, so he resigns himselfto pretending, which, as Huck rightlypoints out, is harmless enough. He andTom can save Jim in a timely fashion andTom can have his adventure too. Thatbeing said, Tom is still insistent that Huckfetch some knives to dig with, bad toolsfor the job, impractical, fantastical, andfarcical.

CHAPTER 36In the night, Huck and Tom begindigging with their knives to rescueJim, but after a while are tired,blistered, and realize they haven’tgotten hardly anywhere. The boysswitch to digging with picks instead,but agree to pretend that those areknives.

It is to Tom’s credit that, when he realizeshow absurdly impractical a given plan is,he switches to a more practical planwhile pretending otherwise.

The next day, Huck and Tom steal aspoon and candlestick from the housefor Jim to use as pens, as well as someplates for Jim to write messages on.Later, at night, the boys dig into thehut where Jim is imprisoned and wakehim, much to Jim’s pleasant surprise.Jim asks the boys to help him cut thechain off his leg that he might escapeimmediately, but Tom explains to Jimhis romantically stylish, time-consuming plan, which Jim accepts.

Though Tom is willing to pretendregarding some aspects of his plan, otheraspects, like the message-writing, he ischildishly stubborn about. Jim makes itclear that he understandably wants to berescued as soon as possible, but with anunimaginative and racist disregard Tompersuades Jim to go along with hisridiculous plan.

Jim tells the boys that Uncle Silascomes into the hut once in a while topray with him, and that Aunt Sallydoes likewise to make sure he’scomfortable. This gives Tom an idea:he wants to trick Nat, the slave whobrings Jim food, into bringing Jim arope-ladder that’s been baked into apie. The boys talk with Jim for a whilebefore leaving him. Tom says he ishaving the most fun of his life, and thathe and Huck should keep their gameup so for as long as possible, and evensuggests that they leave Jim’s rescueup to their own children.

Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally clearlyrecognize that Jim has human needs,and yet remain oblivious to the fact thatthey are hypocritically violating thoseneeds in keeping Jim in the first place.Tom is likewise a hypocrite: he knows Jimneeds to be freed, but selfishly wishes hecould draw out the rescue attempt forchildish pleasure. Huck doesn’t buy intoany of this, save insofar as he passivelyaccepts it.

One night, dogs get into Jim’s hut.When Nat sees the dogs, he almostfaints, thinking that witches areresponsible. Tom tells Nat that, toappease the witches, he should make“a witch-pie.” Nat says he doesn’tknow how, so Tom volunteers to bakethe pie for him, as long as Natpromises not to look at or handle whatTom gives him. Nat promises.

Tom exploits Nat’s superstitions inplaying out his romantic game ofrescuing Jim. We wonder what’s worse:Huck stealing from the slave’swatermelon patch, or Tom playing on aperson’s fears, to which there is a racialcomponent, for the sake of personalpleasure.

CHAPTER 37Tom and Huck get what they need tobake the witch-pie. Afterwards, theboys go down to breakfast, hiding aspoon for Jim to write with in UncleSilas’s pocket and nails in his hat, onlyto find Aunt Sally livid that things inthe house are going missing. UncleSilas suggests ways things could gomissing, like rats getting them, butAunt Sally dismisses them all. She isirritated and suspicious. Uncle Silasgoes on to sheepishly produce thespoon hidden in his pocket by Huckand Tom. Aunt Sally hotly dismisseseveryone from the kitchen so she cancalm down.

Tom’s plan is time-consuming to execute,but it’s also problematic in raising somany suspicions. Aunt Sally is at wit’send and, far from accepting Uncle Silas’scharmingly naïve explanations as to howthings went missing, she seems tosuspect that the children in thehousehold are involved. But, even thoughAunt Sally is on high alert for funnybusiness, Tom does not change his plan.

Uncle Silas finds the nail in his hat butdoesn’t mention it. Tom recognizesthat Uncle Silas has helped him andHuck conceal their plan to help Jim byproducing the spoon at breakfast, andso he resolves to help Uncle Silas byplugging holes in the cellar throughwhich rats enter and exit the house.Later, Uncle Silas comes downstairsand sees that all of the holes havebeen plugged. He can’t rememberhaving done that chore for the life ofhim.

Tom goes out of his way to compensateUncle Silas for helping him and Huckcover up their plans, even though he didso unintentionally. While this is not reallymature of Tom, it reflects that his heart,at least, is in the right place. He may livein a fantasy-world, but he does have asense of what it means to be good.

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Huck and Tom steal another spoon,but pretend that Aunt Sallymiscounted how many there were tocover their tracks. Tom tells Aunt Sallythat, even with the spoon Uncle Silasfound, the spoon set is incomplete.Aunt Sally recounts, but Huck andTom keep tricking her into thinkingshe has miscounted. Aunt Sallybecomes mad and storms off. Huckand Tom hide the spoon they stole inher apron along with a nail, both ofwhich she inadvertently delivers toJim in his hut.

Huck and Tom’s pranks seem harmlessenough, and also serve to prevent thePhelpses from discovering the boys’ planto help Jim, but it must be rememberedthat, while Huck and Jim play theirridiculous games, Jim is enchained in ahut, separated from his family.

After a lot of trouble andexperimentation, Tom and Huck bakethe witch-pie, which is basically a crustunder which is hidden a ladder. Natdelivers the pie to Jim, which Jimbusts open so that he can take theladder out and hide it in his mattress.He also scratches some marks on a tinand throws it out of his window, inaccordance with Tom’s plan.

We might wonder why Jim goes alongwith Tom’s ridiculous plan at all. It couldbe that he trusts Tom, thinking himbright and genuinely interested inhelping out. But Jim doesn’t respect hisown judgment, maybe because he hasbeen trained by whites to respect theirsover his own.

CHAPTER 38Tom insists that Jim make aninscription with his coat of arms onthe wall of his hut, because all theprisoners in romances do. Jim says hedoesn’t have a coat of arms, so Tomdesigns him one, which he describesusing technical jargon that he doesn’teven really understand. Tom alsowrites inscriptions for Jim’s wall, all ofwhich make him cry, so that hedecides to have Jim carve them all intothe wall.

Tom doesn’t understand much of whathe reads, yet he blindly acts on hisreading anyway, just as society blindlyacts on untested, internally inconsistentbeliefs. He may be better educated thanHuck, but Huck is imaginatively freerthan Tom. His immaturity lies in doingwhat his friend says.

Tom changes his mind. Jim can’t carveinscriptions onto the wooden walls ofhis hut; he must carve them intostone. Tom proposes, then, that heand Huck steal a grindstone to carvethe inscriptions into, and which canalso be used to file the pens and saw.Huck and Tom set out to the mill toget the grindstone and role it back tothe hut.

Tom is again a slave to the romanticconvention he loves here, insisting onfetching the impractical grindstone.Huck says nothing. Does he love Tom toomuch to contradict him, or does he feelhe just can’t out-argue Tom?

When they have the grindstonehalfway home, Tom and Huck realizethat they can’t roll it all the waywithout help, because it is too heavy,so they go back to Jim’s hut. There,they make it so that Jim can walkfreely even though he still has a chainaround his ankle, and he goes out andhelps Huck roll the grindstone therest of the way home. Tomsuperintends with great skill, Hucknotes: “He knowed how to doeverything.”

Jim achieves freedom in this scene for allintents and purposes, and yet, forwhatever reason, he is bound to Tom’splan so tightly that he helps the boysrealize their ridiculous fantasy instead ofmaking a break for it. Meanwhile, Tomoversees Huck and Jim as they work. likea little king, or, more shockingly, like aslave owner himself.

Having gotten the grindstone homeand re-chained Jim to his bed, theboys are ready to go to sleep. Butbefore leaving Tom asks Jim if hecould bring some spiders, rats, andsnakes into Jim’s hut, so that Jim canbefriend them as the prisoners do inthe books. Jim begs Tom not to, butTom insists. Jim faults Tom’s plan, towhich Tom responds by saying thatJim is wasting his opportunity to bethe best, most famous prisoner of alltime. Jim apologizes to Tom, and theboys shove off for bed.

The boys disturbingly re-chain Jim to hisbed, which, we think, people committedto his freedom would not do if they werein their right minds. But Tom doesn’tseem to be in his right mind, exactly: he ishappy to make Jim more uncomfortablethan he already is, because he thinks thathis plan will make Jim famous. His love ofthe conventions of romance is verging onobsessive.

CHAPTER 39Jim is agitated by the creatures thatTom and Huck introduce to his hut.He says that there isn’t hardly anyroom for him, and that the creaturesare very lively when he tries to sleep.The spiders and rats bite him (he useshis blood afterward to write in hisjournal); he says he never wants to bea prisoner again, especially after theboys saw the legs of his bed and allthree eat the sawdust together tohide the evidence, which gives themall terrible stomachaches.

Tom and Huck dehumanize Jim in thisscene by ignoring his pleas andcramming his room with various,dangerous creatures. That said, they alsoendanger themselves by catching thecreatures and eating sawdust and thelike, which suggests that their disregardof human safety is less a factor of racism,say, than general immaturity.

After all preparations are completed,Tom says that he and Huck need towrite an anonymous letter to warn thePhelpses that someone is going to tryto rescue Jim. Huck mildly protestsbut soon gives in to Tom’s plan. Theboys leave notes and ominouswarnings around the Phelps housethat terrify the family. Tom also writesa note saying that a gang of cutthroatswill try to steal Jim.

Tom’s plan of the anonymous letter issupremely immature and irresponsible: itterrorizes his family needlessly, and itjeopardizes the success of Jim’s escape,which would be much better conductedin total secrecy. What is clear by now isthat while Huck wants to free Jim, Tom isplaying a game. For Tom, his games comebefore other people. For Huck, peoplealways come first.

CHAPTER 40The Phelps family is troubled andanxious after receiving theanonymous letter Tom wrote. Tomand Huck are sent to bed early, wherethey get ready to take a lunch theyhave prepared, along with a dress, toJim. Tom notices there’s no butterwith the lunch, so he sends Huck toget some. As he’s returning with thebutter, though, Aunt Sally discoversHuck. She questions him and sendshim to the sitting room for furtherquestioning.

Even though Tom has gotten his way inplanning Jim’s escape, he is tyrannicalabout even the smallest detail, like thebutter, which he forces Huck to getdespite Huck’s protests. It is Tom’s sillyneed to do everything prescribed by hisbooks that best characterizes hisimmaturity.

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In the sitting room, Huck is surprisedto see fifteen farmers, all with guns.Huck wishes Aunt Sally would getthrough with him so he can tell Tomabout the farmers and commencerescuing Jim before it’s too late. AuntSally questions Huck, but he’s sonervous because the farmers aretalking about heading out then andthere to lie in wait for the gang that hebecomes feverish. The farmers rushover to make sure Huck is alright,snatching off his hat as they do, outfrom under which comes the breadand butter he took. Aunt Sally isgrateful Huck is okay and sends him tobed.

Many of the Phelps’ neighbors come tothe family’s aid in securing Jim (which isabsurd given that Jim is a human beingand not a piece of property to be guardedin the first place). This is a society, itwould seem, that deeply honors the ideaof private property; its members arewilling to die to protect anothermember’s property. The irony, of course,is that Jim belongs to himself and no oneelse, yet he is denied that right of self-possession.

Huck hurries to meet Tom inside Jim’shut to tell him about the farmers. Tomis elated, but assures Huck that Jim isdisguised as a woman and ready tomake a run for it. Just then, thefarmers come outside to the hut andopen the door. Tom, Huck, and Jimescape through a hole they had made,and soon begin to make a run for thefence. However, Tom’s pants catch asplinter. When he frees himself, aripping noise alerts the gun-totingfarmers who, after asking whoever’sthere to identify themselves withoutresponse, begin to rush over, shootingas they do.

Tom must be very much out of touchwith reality to delight in the fact thatthere are many armed, dangerous menkeeping an eye out for people escapingwith Jim, given, of course, that he is justsuch a person. The armed farmers proveto be indiscriminately violent, shooting inthe dark at they don’t know what. Theymindlessly run the risk of shooting Jim,which would defeat their purposeentirely.

Chased by both men and dogs, thethree run toward the river and at lastarrive at their raft. Everybody’s gladto be safe and free, especially Tom,because he had the honor of beingshot in the calf of his leg. He is inconsiderable pain and bleeding. Aftersome deliberation, Jim says he will notleave Tom’s side. Huck knew that Jimwould say that, because he knows thatJim “was white inside,” and, while Jimtends to Tom, Huck goes off to fetch adoctor.

Tom idiotically revels in his wound, whichhe thinks is fun and exciting. It was hisplan that endangered his friends and gothim shot, and it’s because he got shotthat Jim feels duty-bound to risk his ownfreedom by staying with Tom. Huck’scomment that Jim is white inside at onceacknowledges Jim’s equality, but alsoinsidiously suggests that people who are“black inside,” so to speak, are bad. Huckis able to see past society's rules to seeJim's basic humanity, but he still acceptshis society's larger social laws that to behuman means to be white. Thisdichotomy strikes the reader asridiculous—the reader can generalizefrom the fact of Jim's basic humanity toall slave's basic humanity. Twain usesHuck's inability to do the same toactually underscore the point, andfurther condemn Southern society for itscruel, ridiculous blindness.

CHAPTER 41Huck fetches a nice old doctor, tellinghim that Tom is his brother and that,while the two were out hunting, Tomhad a bad dream and kicked his gun,which shot him. When the doctor asksHuck to tell him again how Tom waswounded, Huck says that “‘He had adream…and it shot him.’” The doctorreplies: “‘Singular dream.’”

The doctor assumes that Huckmisspeaks when he says that it wasTom’s dream that shot him, but in asense this is exactly what happened:Tom’s fealty to his romantic, impracticaldream of Jim’s escape led the farmerswho shot Tom to be on the lookout in thefirst place.

The doctor paddles off in a canoe tothe raft where Tom is, but the canoecan only carry one person, so Huck isforced to stay behind. He sleeps in alumber pile that night, and by the timehe wakes the sun is up. He decides togo to the where Tom and Jim are toprevent the doctor from exposing Jimto capture, but bumps into Uncle Silasas he sets out. Eventually, Uncle Silastakes Huck home, much to AuntSally’s relief.

It is noble that Huck is always concernedwith protecting Jim whenever he can,just as Jim protected him during theirjourney on the river. But Huck is notalways free to act as he will. For example,he would go with the doctor, but thecanoe can only carry one person. Huck’sfreedom is limited in part by externalcircumstances.

At the Phelps house, neighbors aregathered, talking about how crazy it isthat Jim made inscriptions in thegrindstone and the like, and they allreason that he must have had helpfrom other slaves, who they alsoreason must have stolen things fromthe Phelps house. Soon, Aunt Sallywonders why Tom and Huck weren’tin their room that morning. Huck getsup, thinks about it, and by way ofexplanation he lies to her.

The neighbors are right to think that aperson who follow’s Tom escape plan iscrazy, or at least, in Tom’s case,disastrously immature. Note, also, thatthe neighbors demonstrate their racismin thinking it must have been otherslaves who helped Jim, not evenconsidering that Huck and Tom could beresponsible.

Aunt Sally grows increasingly worriedthat “Sid” (i.e., Tom) hasn’t come homeyet. Huck volunteers to fetch him, butAunt Sally tells him he’ll do no suchthing. Uncle Silas goes out to look for“Sid,” but he doesn’t even come acrosshis path. After Aunt Sally tucks Huckinto bed, she speaks with him andbegins to cry. Huck feels so bad aboutmaking her worry that he promisesher that he won’t go off to look for“Sid” despite himself, and he keeps hisword.

When not in the company of Tom, Huckis restored to his good senses. He realizeshow needlessly stressful Tom’s plan hasbeen for the Phelpses, and with nobleself-discipline he declines to act on hisown impulse to go to Tom for Aunt Sally’ssake. Tom is a good friend, but not a goodinfluence, on Huck.

CHAPTER 42The next morning, as Huck and thePhelpses sit around the breakfasttable, Aunt Sally sees Tom on amattress along with the doctor, Jimwith his hands tied, and a bunch ofpeople. Aunt Sally is profoundlyrelieved to find that Tom is alive. Menin the mob say they should hang Jimas a warning to other slaves, butothers say his owner might come andthen they would have to pay for him;so they all refrain.

It is disgusting that men propose to hangJim for fighting for his freedom,something they would do too were theyin his shoes. It is also disgusting that thereason the men refrain from doing so isbecause they might have to pay for Jim,as though he were just a piece ofproperty.

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The men in the mob also cuss at Jimand strike him and put him back in thecabin enchained, but Tom’s doctortells them they shouldn’t be rougherwith Jim than they have to be, becauseJim faithfully helped to treat Tom andrisked his own freedom to do it. Themen in the mob soften up on Jim andthank him for helping the doctor.

The men’s cruelty to Jim softens whenthe doctor humanizes him. But, despitehumanizing Jim, the doctor neverthelessmade a point of bringing Jim back inchains, which seems hypocritical: howcan he think of Jim as a human yet treathim like livestock?

Tom begins to recover, and comesfully to as Aunt Sally and Huck sit athis bedside. He joyfully recounts to anincredulous Aunt Sally how he andHuck helped Jim to escape. However,Tom’s joy gives way to gravedisappointment when he learns thatJim is back in bondage; he tells AuntSally that Jim is as free as any creaturethat walks this earth. He also revealsthat he’s known all along that MissWatson had set Jim free two monthsago in her will.

Tom’s insistence that Jim is as free as anycreature on earth seems to be theproduct of a change of heart, one maybebrought about by Jim’s self-sacrifice forTom. But then we learn that Tom isspeaking in a legal sense. Not only has hedelayed Jim’s freedom with his plan, Tomhas also treated Jim like a slave eventhough he was legally free, all for the sakeof self-indulgent adventure. It really wasa game for Tom, with no stakes. Tom wasfreeing a man who was already free.

As Tom is speaking, he notices thatAunt Polly, his guardian, has come in,much to Aunt Sally’s delight. Shereveals Tom and Huck’s trueidentities, and tells the disgruntledPhelpses all about Huck. She alsoconfirms that Miss Watson had setJim free two months ago. Finally,during a conversation between theadults, it comes out that Tom wasintercepting letters from Aunt Polly toAunt Sally, which is why the latterdidn’t know that Tom wasimpersonating Sid.

At last, Tom and Huck’s mess is sortedout by Aunt Polly’s arrival. If Tom is anagent of deception and dangerousfancies, Aunt Polly is his opposite, anagent of truth and cold hard facts. It isgood that Aunt Polly is back in Tom’s life,we think, because he could benefit from astern reality check.

CHAPTER 43When Huck catches Tom in private,he asks Tom what his plan was if theyhad successfully escaped with Jim.Tom says he planned to have moreadventures with Huck and Jim beforerevealing to Jim that he was free.After that, he would havecompensated Jim for his lost time andreunited him with his family in style.Huck thinks it’s just as well that thingsturned out as they did.

It is small comfort that Tom recognizeshe was denying Jim precious time withhis family as a free man, but that doesnot change the fact that Tom exploitedJim. Huck recognizes all of this, and thatthey are better off having cut the gamesshort so that Jim can enjoy his truefreedom with dignity.

Jim is unchained, and the Phelpsesand Aunt Polly, upon learning howJim helped Tom, take very good careof the newly freed man. Tom also givesJim forty dollars for being such apatient prisoner, such that Jim canremind Huck that he predicted hewould be rich, and now he is.

Jim’s rewards for helping Tom seempaltry in comparison to the time he lostand the hardships he suffered. Jim,however, rejoices, maybe because it is inhis character to make the best out of abad situation, or maybe because Twain’srepresentation of Jim here is in someways racist and dehumanizing. (Thereare many critics by the way, who wouldargue that the novel is fantastic up untilthe appearance of Tom Sawyer, and whoargue that Twain didn't really know howto end the novel and ended upreintroducing Tom and focusing more onthe broad comedy of the escape, andmocking Tom's romantic ideas, than withhis earlier focus on Huck's developmentand poking holes in the institution ofslavery).

Tom suggests that he and Huck andJim travel to the Territory foradventure, but Huck says he doesn’thave enough money. Tom says thatHuck still has six thousand dollars inJudge Thatcher’s care, because Papdidn’t take it and hasn’t even been intown. Jim explains that Pap died; hiswas the corpse that Jim discovered inthe floating house.

Just as Jim is freed, so too is Huck withthe knowledge that he has enoughmoney to get away from society and dowhat he wants in the Territory, which,note, as a region not yet transformed intostates has fewer rules, including rules ofslavery. He also learns that he is onceand for all free of Pap’s tyranny, becausePap, through his own debauchery, haspassed away.

Eventually, Tom heals completely.Huck is glad he doesn’t have anythingmore to write about, because, he says,making a book was hard work. He saysthat he needs to head out to theTerritory soon; Aunt Sally is going totry to “sivilize” him, which he can’tstand, because, he says, “I been therebefore.”

Huck ends his book where he began: withthe prospect of being “sivilized.” But,being the restless and freedom-lovingspirit he is, Huck refuses to do what he’salready done, and so he decides topursue freedom in a place he hasn’t beenyet, a place that is itself half-formed andsemi-lawless, a place where a quick-witted boy can adapt to situations asneeded and follow his own heart.

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