The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Tom Sawyer
Plot Summary
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is about a young boy, Huck, in search of freedom and adventure. The shores of the Mississippi River provide the backdrop for the entire book.Huck is kidnapped by Pap, his drunken father. Pap kidnaps Huck because he wants Huck's $6000. Huck was awarded $6000 from the treasure he and Tom Sawyer found in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huck finally escapes from the deserted house in the woods and finds a canoe to shove off down the river. Instead of going back to the widow's house, he decides to run away. He is sick of all of the confinement and civilization that the window enforces upon him. He comes across Jim, Miss Watson's slave, and together, they spend nights and days journeying down the river, both in search of freedom.
While traveling on a raft down the river, Huck and Jim have many adventures and during many long talks, become best of friends. They find a house with a dead man. They end up stealing many things from the house. They find a wrecked ship, and go on it, only to be mixed up with murderers. They get away with money and some other goods. They get separated from each other in the heavy fog, but eventually find each other. A steamboat crashes into their raft and Jim and Huck are separated again. Huck has a run-in with the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, two families at war with each other. He is reunited with Jim shortly after this. Then, they meet the King and the Duke, and get into a good deal of trouble performing plays. The King and the Duke pretend to be Peter Wilks' long lost brothers from England and try to steal all of the money left behind in his will. They escape before they are caught. Huck finally gets rid of them, but is left to search for Jim, who gets sold by the King. He ends up at Tom Sawyer's Aunt Sally's house, where Tom and Huck rescue Jim.
Through all of the adventures down the river, Huck learns a variety of life lessons and improves as a person. He develops a conscience and truly feels for humanity. The complexity of his character is enhanced by his ability to relate so easily with nature and the river.
Summary Analysis of Character List
Huckleberry Finn -The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen-year-old son of the local drunk of St. Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. Frequently forced to survive on his own wits and always a bit of an outcast, Huck is thoughtful, intelligent (though formally uneducated), and willing to come to his own conclusions about important matters, even if these conclusions contradict society’s norms. Nevertheless, Huck is still a boy, and is influenced by others, particularly by his imaginative friend, Tom.
Tom Sawyer -Huck’s friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer. Tom serves as a foil to Huck: imaginative, dominating, and given to wild plans taken from the plots of adventure novels, Tom is everything that Huck is not. Tom’s stubborn reliance on the “authorities” of romance novels leads him to acts of incredible stupidity and startling cruelty. His rigid adherence to society’s conventions aligns Tom with the “civilizing” forces that Huck learns to see through and gradually abandons.
Jim- One of Miss Watson’s household slaves. Jim is superstitious and occasionally sentimental, but he is also intelligent, practical, and ultimately more of an adult than anyone else in the novel. Jim’s frequent acts of selflessness, his longing for his family, and his friendship with both Huck and Tom demonstrate to Huck that humanity has nothing to do with race. Because Jim is a black man and a runaway slave, he is at the mercy of almost all the other characters in the novel and is often forced into ridiculous and degrading situations.
Pap-Huck’s father, the town drunk. Pap is a wreck when he appears at the beginning of the novel, with disgusting, ghostlike white skin and tattered clothes. The illiterate Pap disapproves of Huck’s education and beats him frequently. Pap represents both the general debasement of white society and the failure of family structures in the novel.
Miss Watson-One of the wealthy sisters who live in a large house in St. Petersburg and who adopt Huck. The gaunt and severe Miss Watson is the most prominent representative of the hypocritical religious and ethical values Twain criticizes in the novel.
Widow Douglas The other wealthy sister who is somewhat gentler in her beliefs and has more patience with the mischievous Huck. When Huck acts in a manner contrary to societal expectations, it is the Widow Douglas whom he fearsdisappointing.
Aunt Polly- Tom Sawyer’s aunt and guardian and Sally Phelps’s sister. Aunt Polly appears at the end of the novel and properly identifies Huck, who has pretended to be Tom, and Tom, who has pretended to be his own younger brother, Sid.
The duke and the dauphin - A pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue as they are being run out of a river town. The older man, who appears to be about seventy, claims to be the “dauphin,” the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French throne. The younger man, who is about thirty, claims to be the usurped Duke of Bridgewater. Although Huck quickly realizes the men are frauds, he and Jim remain at their mercy, as Huck is only a child and Jim is a runaway slave.
Judge Thatcher-The local judge who shares responsibility for Huck with the Widow Douglas and is in charge of safeguarding the money that Huck and Tom found at the end of Tom Sawyer.
The Grangerfords- A family that takes Huck in after a steamboat hits his raft, separating him from Jim. The kindhearted Grangerfords, who offer Huck a place to stay in their tacky country home, are locked in a long-standing feud with another local family, the Shepherdsons.
The Wilks family - At one point during their travels, the duke and the dauphin encounter a man who tells them of the death of a local named Peter Wilks, who has left behind a rich estate. The man inadvertently gives the con men enough information to allow them to pretend to be Wilks’s two brothers from England, who are the recipients of much of the inheritance. The duke and the dauphin’s subsequent conning of the good-hearted and vulnerable Wilks sisters is the first step in the con men’s increasingly cruel series of scams, which culminate in the sale of Jim.
Silas and Sally Phelps- Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle, whom Huck coincidentally encounters in his search for Jim after the con men have sold him. Sally is the sister of Tom’s aunt, Polly. Essentially good people, the Phelps nevertheless hold Jim in custody and try to return him to his rightful owner. Silas and Sally are the unknowing victims of many of Tom and Huck’s “preparations” as they try to free Jim
General Themes
· Racism
· Slavery
· Intellectual and moral education
· The hypocrisy of “civilized” society
Important Symbols
· The Mississippi River
· Floods;
· Shipwrecks
· The natural world
Author Information
Christened as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 in the small river town of Florida, Missouri, just 200 miles from Indian Territory. Twain died on April 21, 1910, having survived his children Langdon, Susan and Jean as well as his wife, Olivia. In his lifetime, he became a distinguished member of the literati, and was honored by Yale, the University of Missouri, and Oxford with literary degrees. With his death, many volumes of his letters, articles, and fables were published, including: The Letters of Quintas Curtius Snodgrass (1946); Simon Wheeler, Detective (1963); The Works of Mark Twain: What is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings (1973); and Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals (1975-79). Perhaps more than any other classic American writer, Mark Twain is seen as a phenomenal author, but also as a personality that defined an era.
Key Facts
Type of work·Novel
Genre·Picaresque novel (episodic, colorful story often in the form of a quest or journey); satire of popular adventure and romance novels; bildungsroman (novel of education or moral development)
Time and place written·1876–1883; Hartford, Connecticut, and Elmira, New York
Date of first publication·1884
Publisher·Charles L. Webster & Co.
Important Quotes
“But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been therebefore”.
“I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . . .We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on araft”.
References
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/huckfinn/
www.amazon.com
http://www.bookrags.com
Allison L. Maretic