The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes place in the American South around 1840,
it begins in the town of st. Petersburg Missouri, on the banks of the
Mississippi River, Huck Finn is a boy about 13 or 14 years old, he’s the son of
the town drunk, and he’s lived most of his life without a mother and homeless,
he’s used to wearing ragged cast-off clothes never going to school, and doing
pretty much whatever he wants he’s very good at outdoor things like hunting,
fishing, and trapping, at the beginning of the book, he’s living in a house
because he’s been adopted by the Widow Douglas, she’s trying to civilize him. Huck
in the widow lived with the widowed sister, Miss Watson who scolds Huck
frequently theWidow and Miss Watson also owned a number of slaves whenever he
can Huck sneaks off with his friend Tom Sawyer and they pretend to be in a
robbers gang.
One
night Huck climbs into his bedroom window, after being out with Tom and he
finds his vagrant father Pat waiting for him in his bedroom, PAP tells Huck to
stop acting like he’s better than his father, meaning stop going to school and
reading, he makes Huck give him money so he can get drunk, after a while PAP
kidnaps Huck and takes him to live with him in a cabin in the woods by the
river, Huck is happier in some ways being out of school, but PAP gets drunk a
lot and beats Huck, and even tries to kill him when he gets so drunk he’s
hallucinating one night when Papas out, huck fakes his own murder and escapes
to Jackson’s island.
After
a few days on the island, he stumbles onto the remains of a campfire, and
realizes someone else is on the island to the other person turns out to be Jim,
a slave owned by Miss Watson, and part of the household where huck lived with
the widow, jim says he’s run away because he heard miss watson talking about
selling him down the river for $800 if that happened he would be taken from his
famil,y and brought down to New Orleans to be sold as a field worker in the
deep south, Huck promises right off not to tell anyone that Jim ran away, but
he knows that keeping this secret is a big deal Jim is going to be hunted, and
any white person who sees him might stop him and try to take him into custody.
Huck
also knows that other white people would despise him for helping runaway slave,
but he doesn’t care about this too much because he spent his whole life not
following the rules, and being looked down on by most of his town he describes
himself as sort of lowdown, and ornery so breaking a rule doesn’t bother him
Huck and Jim strike up a friendship pretty quickly, they mostly talk about
superstitions and signs such as things that say whether you’re going to have
bad luck or get rich, they find a cave high up on the island to camp in and
soon there’s a big storm that makes the river rise, and cover most of the
island they catch a raft floating by a while later a house that’s been carried
off in the flood floats by they go in and find some clothes and money and other
items, and they see a dead man inside the house Huck goes to the shore to see
if he can hear any news.
He
dresses in girls clothes that he found in the house, and he speaks to a woman
in a cabin, the woman figures out that he’s a boy not a girl but she doesn’t
get mad about it, she tells him that her husband thinks the runaway slave is
hiding on the island, and is going there with some other men that night to try
to catch him, so Huck hurries back to get Jim, and they start floating down the
Mississippi River on the raft, Huck and Jim have a number of adventures on the
raft traveling at night so no one stops them, they see an abandoned steamboat
that’s been wrecked in the middle of the river they sneak onto it and then they
realize three thieves and murderers are on it, and they have to steal the gangs
boat to get away.
Huck
and Jim gets separated in a heavy fog with Huck in the canoe, and Jim on the
raft it takes a long time for Huck to find Jim again, and Jim is overwhelmed
with joy when Huck’s back, Huck plays a trick on him by pretending Jim dreamed
about the whole fog, and they were never separated when Jim realizes he’s lying
his feelings are hurt, and Huck feels bad and apologizes that’s an important
moment because Huck becomes aware that Jim actually cares about him, and he
cares about Jim which he hadn’t really thought about before Huck and Jim are
hoping to come to the town of Cairo because that town is where the Ohio River
empties into the Mississippi, if they get off there Jim can buy a passage on a
steamboat going up the Ohio River, and he’ll be on the way to freedom.
When
they think they’re getting close to Cairo, Huck’s conscience starts to bother
him because now he’s not just hanging out with Jim, he’s close to actually
setting him free which his society has taught him is wrong, it’s basically like
stealing Miss Watson’s property from her just to spite her, but it turns out
they passed Cairo in the fog and they can’t travel back upstream because
they’re in a raft a steamboat coming up the river runs over their raft, and
they have to dive down below it’s wheel to avoid being killed so they get
separated, Huck comes ashore all wet and goes to the first house he sees he
winds up getting taken in, and adopted by a family called the Grangerford, he
stays with them for a number of days becoming friends with a boy his own age
named buck, the Grangerford ‘s have been in a feud for thirty years with
another large wealthy family called the Shepherdsons.
The
feud comes to a head when bucks sister Sophia Grangerford runs off and elopes
with one of the Shepherdson,s a gun battle takes place in which buck and other
family members are killed, and Huck runs away, Huck reunites with Jim who’s
been hiding in the woods with the Grangerford slaves bringing him food, they
keep going down the river and the next thing that happens is that they rescue a
pair of con men who are being chased by a crowd of people, they’ve swindled
Huck and Jim take them onto the raft and carry them away the problem is that
once the con men are on the raft with them.
They
don’t want to leave and there’s nothing Huck and Jim can do about it, the two
men call themselves the Duke and the King one claims that he’s really the Duke
of Bridgewater, and the other claims that he’s the son of Louis the sixteenth,
and should be the king of France, the Duke and the King plan all sorts of scams
on the raft they practice Shakespearean acting and sword fighting and plan to
impersonate famous actors from London on tour at the next town, they come to
they come to a little Arkansas town where they see a man named Colonel Sherburn
shoot a harmless drunk who’s insulting him a lynch mob comes to hang Colonel
Sherburn, but he stands them down telling them they’re not man enough to lynch
him the Duke in the Kings Shakespeare performance is a total flop, so they’ve
changed their approach and advertised a show called the Royal Nonesuch, they
get customers to buy tickets by saying ladies and children not admit it all
that happens in the show is that the King comes out on stage ,on all fours
naked & painted different colors the show only lasts a minute or two the
audience knows they’ve been swindled, but decides to keep quiet about it, and
tell the other locals to see it .
After
two nights of this, the Duke and the King run off just as the town is about to
Pelt them with rotten tomatoes, and dead cats the Duke and King pull off some
other scams but their biggest one is when they arrive in a town where a man
named Peter Wilks has just died, and they pretend to be his long-lost brothers
and heirs they get the man’s daughters to welcome them into the home, and they
start selling the slaves and liquidating the estate, Huck steals the money from
the Duke and the King and tells one of the daughters that they’re con men the
real brothers of the dead man arrived, and the Dukan King barely managed to
escape back to the Raft.
The
final scam of the Duke and King is to claim that Jim is a runaway slave and
sell him to a farmer named Phelps who can claim a reward for returning him,
that’s the last Huck has to deal with the con men soon after they try the Royal
Nonesuch performance, and get tarred and feathered Huck goes to the Phelps
house to look for Jim and the Phelps family turned out to be Tom Sawyer’s aunt,
and uncle Huck
pretends
that he’s Tom Sawyer arrived for a visit with the family, and Tom Sawyer
himself shows up and pretends to be his own younger brother Sid jim is being
kept prisoner in a shed, and Huck wants to set him free, which would be
extremely easy to do Tom insists that they don’t he thinks that Jim’s escape
should be like other famous prison escapes, he’s read about in history and in
novels involving kings and noblemen, he wants to dig a tunnel into the shed rather
than open a door, he wants Jim’s right notes and carbon scription in stone to
throw out of the prison, and to water a plant with his tears, and to make
friends with spiders and snakes, and he makes Jim and Huck participate in all
of this.
Finally
they set him free, but they’ve sent anonymous letters warning the Phelps of
danger, so when they escape with him, farmers shoot at them and hit Tom in the
leg they escape to the raft, but Huck has to get a doctor to help Tom, and the
doctor turns in Jim and Tom, Tom’s Aunt Polly arrives and exposed the truth
about who Huck and Tom are, Tom reveals that Jim was free all along miss Watson
had died and set him free in her will tom was just interested in the adventure,
Jim tells Huck that his father pap is dead – he was the dead man on the
floating house Tom’s Aunt Sally says she wants to adopt Huck and civilize him,
but Huck’s had enough of this and he decides to travel to the west.