Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

First published: 1884; revised new edition, 2001

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Satire

Time of plot: Nineteenth century

Locale: Along the Lower Mississippi River

Principal characters

• Huckleberry Finn, a free-spirited boy
• Tom Sawyer, his friend
• Jim, a black slave
• Pap Finn, Huck’s father
• The Duke and The King, con men
• Widow Douglas, Huck’s guardian

The Story

Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer had found a box of gold in a robber’s cave. Later, after Judge Thatcher takes the money and invests it for the boys, each receives the huge allowance of one dollar a day. The Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, take Huck home with them to try to reform him. At first, Huck cannot stand living in a tidy house where smoking and swearing are forbidden. Worse, he has to go to school and learn how to read. He does, however, manage to drag himself to school almost every day, except for the times when he sneaks off for a smoke in the woods or goes fishing on the Mississippi River.

Life is beginning to become bearable to him when one day he notices a boot print in the snow. Examining it closely, he realizes that it belongs to his worthless father, whom he has not seen for more than a year. Knowing that his father will be looking for him when he learns about the money, Huck rushes to Judge Thatcher and persuades him to take the fortune for himself. The judge is puzzled, but he signs some papers, and Huck is satisfied that he no longer has any money for his father to take from him.

Huck’s father shows up one night in Huck’s room at the Widow Douglas’s home. Complaining that he has been cheated out of his son’s money, the old drunkard later takes Huck away with him to a cabin in the Illinois woods, where he keeps the boy a prisoner, beating him periodically and half starving him. Huck is allowed to smoke and swear, however, and before long he begins to wonder why he ever liked living with the widow. His life with his father would be pleasant except for the beatings. One day, he sneaks away, leaving a bloody trail from a pig he kills in the woods. Huck wants everyone to believe he is dead. He climbs into a canoe and goes to Jackson’s Island to hide until the excitement subsides.

After three days of freedom, Huck wanders to another part of the island, and there he discovers Jim, Miss Watson’s black slave, who tells Huck that he ran off because he overheard Miss Watson planning to sell him down South for eight hundred dollars. Huck swears he will not report Jim. The two stay on the island many days, Jim giving Huck an education in primitive superstition. One night, Huck paddles back to the mainland. Disguised as a girl, he calls on a home near the shore. There he learns that his father disappeared shortly after the people of the town concluded that Huck was murdered. Since Jim disappeared just after Huck’s apparent death, there is now a three-hundred-dollar reward posted for Jim’s capture, for most people believe that he killed Huck.

Knowing that Jackson’s Island will soon be searched, Huck hurries back to Jim, and the two head down the Mississippi on a raft they have found. They plan to sell the raft at Cairo, Illinois, and then go on a steamboat up the Ohio River into free territory. Jim tells Huck that he will work hard in the North and then buy his wife and children from their masters in the South. Helping a runaway slave bothers Huck’s conscience, but he reasons that it would bother him more if he betrayed a good friend. One night, as they are drifting down the river on their raft, a large steamboat looms before them, and Huck and Jim, knowing that the raft will be smashed under the hull of the ship, jump into the water. Huck swims safely to shore, but Jim disappears.

Huck finds a home with a friendly family named Grangerford, who are feuding with the nearby Shepherdson family. The Grangerfords treat Huck kindly and leave him mostly to himself, even giving him a young slave to wait on him. One day, the slave asks him to come to the woods to see some snakes. Following the boy, Huck comes across Jim, who has been hiding in the woods waiting for an opportunity to send for Huck. Jim repairs the broken raft. That night, one of the Grangerford daughters elopes with a young Shepherdson, and the feud breaks out once more. Huck and Jim run away after the shooting begins and set off down the river.

Shortly afterward, Jim and Huck meet two men who pretend they are European royalty and make all sorts of nonsensical demands on Huck and Jim. Huck is not taken in, but he reasons that it would do no harm to humor the two men to prevent quarreling. The so-called duke and king are clever schemers. In one of the small river towns, they stage a fake show, which lasts long enough to net them a few hundred dollars. On the third night, just before the scheduled third show, they run off before the angered townspeople can catch them.

From a talkative young man, the king learns about the death of Peter Wilks, who has left considerable property and some cash to his three daughters. Wilks’s two brothers, whom no one in the town ever saw, are living in England. The king and the duke go to the three nieces, Mary Jane, Susan, and Joanna, and present themselves as the two English uncles. They take all the inheritance, put up the property for auction, and sell the slaves. This high-handed deed causes great grief to the girls, and Huck cannot bear to see them so unhappy. He decides to expose the two frauds, but he wants to ensure Jim’s safety first. Jim is hiding in the woods waiting for his companions to return to him. Employing an ingenious series of lies, subterfuges, and maneuverings, Huck exposes the duke and king. Huck flees back to Jim, and the two escape on their raft. Just as Jim and Huck think they are on their way and well rid of their former companions, the duke and king come rowing down the river toward them.

The whole party sets out again, with the duke and the king planning to continue their schemes to hoodwink people in the towns along the river. In one town, the king turns Jim in for a reward, and he is sold. Huck has quite a tussle with his conscience. He knows that he ought to help return a slave to the rightful owner, yet on the other hand he thinks of all the fine times he and Jim had together and how loyal a friend Jim is. Finally, Huck decides that he will help Jim to escape.

Learning that Silas Phelps is holding Jim, he heads for the Phelps farm. Mrs. Phelps runs up and hugs him, mistaking him for the nephew whom she is expecting to come for a visit. Huck wonders how he can keep Mrs. Phelps from learning that he is not her nephew. Then to his relief, he learns she has mistaken him for Tom Sawyer. Huck rather likes being Tom for a while, and he is able to tell the Phelpses about Tom’s Aunt Polly and Sid and Mary, Tom’s half-brother and cousin. Huck is feeling proud of himself for keeping up the deception. Tom Sawyer, when he arrives, tells his aunt that he is Sid.

At the first opportunity, Huck tells Tom about Jim’s capture. To Huck’s surprise, Tom offers to help him set Jim free. Huck cannot believe that Tom will be a slave stealer, but he keeps his feelings to himself. Huck intends merely to wait until there is a dark night and then break the padlock on the door of the shack where Jim is kept; but Tom says the rescue has to be done according to the books and lays out a highly complicated plan. It takes a full three weeks of plotting, stealing, and deceit to get Jim out of the shack. The scheme results in a chase, however, in which Tom is shot in the leg. After Jim is recaptured, Tom is brought back to Aunt Sally’s house to recover from his wound. There, he reveals the fact that Miss Watson died, giving Jim his freedom in her will. Huck is greatly relieved to learn that Tom is not really a slave stealer after all.

When Tom’s Aunt Polly arrives unexpectedly, she quickly sets straight the identities of the two boys. Jim is given his freedom, and Tom gives him forty dollars. Tom tells Huck that his money is still safely in the hands of Judge Thatcher, and when Huck moans that his father will likely be back to claim it again, Jim tells Huck that his father is dead; Jim observed him lying in a derelict house they saw floating in the river. Huck is ready to start out again because Aunt Sally says she might adopt him and try to civilize him. Huck thinks that he cannot go through such a trial again after the Widow Douglas’s attempts to civilize him.

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