Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Name: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Author: Mark Twain

A boy, a river, and a conscience learning to speak up.

Overview

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain’s sequel to Tom Sawyer, told in Huck’s own rough, honest voice. It follows a boy and a runaway slave drifting down the Mississippi River on a raft, slipping from one scrape into another while the question at the heart of the book grows clearer: what does it cost to do the right thing when your whole world says it is wrong?

The story runs through a string of adventures: a wrecked steamboat, a family feud that ends in gunfire, two con men who call themselves a duke and a king, and a long, tangled rescue near the end. But the real center is the friendship between Huck and Jim. Twain writes Huck’s speech in living dialect, and much of the book’s force comes from hearing a boy slowly unlearn what he was taught about a man he has come to love.

A few things are worth knowing first. The book uses heavy regional dialect, which takes a few pages to tune your ear to. It also carries the racial language and attitudes of the 1840s setting, including the slur that shadows Jim’s whole story. That language is a big part of why the book is still taught and still argued over. It is not a comfort read, and the final section, where Tom Sawyer takes charge of the rescue, tries many readers’ patience. Even so, the river chapters are among the finest passages in American writing.

Is This Book for You?

Yes, if...

You want the great American river novel, told in a boy's living voice.
You can handle heavy dialect and an honest, unflinching look at race and conscience.
You like adventure storytelling that keeps asking a bigger moral question underneath the fun.

No, if...

You want a smooth, modern read with no old dialect to puzzle through.
You would rather avoid a book built on period racial language, including slurs.
You lose patience when a story's ending turns into a long, needless comic scheme.

Summary

The book picks up where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer left off. Huck is living with the Widow Douglas, who is trying to civilize him, when his drunken, abusive father, Pap, returns and drags him off to a cabin in the woods. Huck fakes his own death to escape and hides on Jackson's Island, where he meets Jim. Jim is Miss Watson's slave, and he has run away because he overheard that he was about to be sold down the river.

Huck and Jim set off down the Mississippi on a raft, aiming for Cairo, where Jim hopes to earn enough to buy his family free. They miss Cairo in the fog and drift deeper into slave country. Along the way they cross a wrecked steamboat full of thieves, survive the shooting war between the Grangerford and Shepherdson families, and take on two con men who call themselves the Duke and the King. The frauds drag them through town swindles, including a cruel plot to steal the inheritance of the orphaned Wilks sisters.

In the book's quiet center, Huck writes a letter turning Jim in, then tears it up. He decides he would rather go to hell than betray his friend, choosing Jim over the religion and the whole society that tell him he is wrong. Soon after, the Duke and King sell Jim back into captivity. Huck learns that the family holding Jim, the Phelpses, are kin of Tom Sawyer.

The final stretch turns comic and much debated. Tom Sawyer shows up and turns Jim's rescue into an elaborate, pointless adventure that ignores the real danger Jim is in. After the scheme falls apart, Jim turns out to be a free man: Miss Watson died and freed him in her will two months earlier. Huck's father Pap is dead too. Unwilling to be civilized again, Huck decides to light out for the western Territory.

Notable Quotables

“You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.”

“All right, then, I'll go to hell.”

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

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