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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Living in a cabin with his father has sucked Huck. Fed up, he finally makes his way after pretending himself dead by making his father believe that the pig’s blood is actually his blood. After his successful escape, he hides on Jackson’s Island and meets Jim, a slave of Miss Watson with whom he befriends to live on that island until a storm forces them to raft their way to a house where they find a dead body. When they sense that their pursuers know about the traces of Jim’s presence on the island, they leave it downriver journey to go to the free states. Finally, they reach St. Louis and meet a gang on the wreckage of a boat and share their loot with them. Soon they find themselves trapped in fog that makes them miss the Ohio River and meet a group looking for slaves. Huck feels it his responsibility to shield Jim from the onlookers by pretending that they are looking for medicines for his father suffering from smallpox which makes others shun them. They restart their journey but an accident with a steamboat breaks their raft, separating them in the river. But later reunite and when Jim confronts about the separation, Huck tells him that he was dreaming to which Jim gets deeply hurt, and Huck apologies to him.

The duo jumps to the occasion and shows themselves as Wilks’s brothers until they find themselves welcomed by their nieces when some of the people suspect them. Meanwhile, Huck takes away some gold from the duke but throws it in Wilks’s coffin. He also plans to uncover the plan of the duo when the real brothers reach the spot, causing a pandemonium in which both the con artists flee unharmed. However, the heirs find the gold, while Jim and Huck, too, take to their heels back to the raft from where they restart their journey. Soon both of them come to the worst scam of their journey when they find that the artists have sold Jim, who have bought to return him to the rightful owner for the reward, while Huck is imprisoned. To their luck, the farmer on the Phelps’ farm proves that he is Tom’s uncle whom Huck introduces himself as Tom to which he accepts and continues his search until he catches Tom coming to the house and Tom becomes Sid, his own half-brother.

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Huckleberry Finn introduces himself as a character from the book prequel to his 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 and consequently became rich, but that now Huck lives with a good but mechanical woman, the Widow Douglas , and her holier-than-thou sister, Miss Watson .

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, if Huck doesn’t stick with his life in straight-laced civilization, he can’t join Tom’s gang. So Huck does as the Widow tells him and gets to play robbers with Tom and other boys once in a while.

Even as Huck grows to enjoy his lifestyle with the Widow, his debauched father Pap menacingly reappears one night in his room. Pap rebukes Huck for trying to better his life and demands that Huck give him the fortune he made after discovering the robber’s gold. Huck goes about business as usual as the Widow and a local judge, Judge Thatcher , try to get custody of him so that he doesn’t fall into his father’s incapable and cruel hands. However, the two fail in their custody battle, and an infuriated Pap decides to kidnap his son and drag him 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’s drunken, murderous rages, suffering many beatings from the old man. Huck resolves to escape from Pap once and for all. After some preparation, he fakes his 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 run away from his owner, Miss Watson, because he had overheard that she planned to sell him.

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

A few days in, a fog descends on the river such that Huck and Jim miss their route to the free states. In the aftermath of this fog, Huck struggles with the command of his conscience to turn Jim in and the cry of his heart to aid Jim in his bid for freedom. At last, Huck has his chance to turn Jim in, but he declines to 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, the Grangerfords , which takes Huck into its hospitality. But the Grangerfords are engaged in an absurdly pointless and devastating feud with a rival family, the Shepherdsons . When a Grangerford girl elopes with a Shepherdson boy, the feud escalates to mad bloodshed. Huck, having learned that Jim is in hiding nearby with the repaired raft, barely escapes from the carnage. He and Jim board the raft and continue to drift downriver.

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

One day, the king learns that a man nearby, Peter Wilks , has died, and that his brothers are expected to arrive. Hoping to collect the man’s inheritance, the duke and king go to his house claiming to be his dear brothers. Though they ingratiate themselves with most of the townspeople, especially Peter’s nieces, the duke and king are suspected by some of being frauds. Huck comes to feel so bad for Peter’s nieces, though, that he resolves to expose the con men for what they are. As he puts his plan into effect, Peter’s real brothers arrive, and, after the townspeople investigate, the duke and king are exposed. Huck escapes onto the raft with Jim, but despairs when the duke and king 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 duke betrays 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 to let his friend be returned to bondage.

Huck arrives at the Phelps farm where he meets Aunt Sally , whom Huck tricks into 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 than Tom Sawyer’s relatives. Indeed, Tom is the family member Aunt Sally was expecting all along. Huck intercepts Tom as he rides up to the Phelps farm, and Tom not only agrees to help Huck keep his cover by impersonating his cousin Sid, but he also agrees to help Huck in helping Jim escape from captivity.

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

After he recovers, Tom reveals to an anxious Aunt Sally and Huck that Miss Watson wrote in her will that Jim was to be freed after her death and that she had 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 was the corpse that Jim discovered in the floating house. Huck also learns that he still has six thousand dollars in Judge Thatcher’s safekeeping and is free to do what he wants. Fearful of being adopted by Aunt Sally and “sivilized” again, Huck decides that he is going to go West.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Huck Finn by Mark Twain.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essays

Twain's pre-civil war america anonymous, the adventures of huckleberry finn.

American authors tend to write about life in their times. Mark Twain lived in the 1800's and witnessed the Civil War era. At that time, our nation was divided over the issue of slavery. The inhumane treatment of slaves moved Twain to use his...

Censorship and Classics Anonymous

Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Maya Angelou. What do these writers have in common? Sure, they are all great American authors, but there is something else. They are all "banned." Censored. Forbidden. Who has not read a book by at least one...

An Examination of Religion in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Neil Khare

A hackneyed expression states that one should never discuss religion or politics in certain social settings. Religion has been, is, and always will be a topic of debate and disagreement. Literature is a major media in which religious sentiments...

Examination of Freedom as an Overall Theme in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Ryan Schremmer

"The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer,...

Twain's Women Kristine Mathewson

"American literature is male. To read the canon of what is currently considered classic American literature is perforce to identify as male; Our literature neither leaves women alone nor allows them to participate." Judith Fetterley (Walker, 171)

Story of the Afterlife Niles Kendrick

The afterlife, in accordance to the underworld, includes manifold mythological characters and symbols in the form of the river Styx, Cerberus, Charon, and Hades itself. The journey into the underworld begins with a person's death and journey for...

Huck's Roles as Defined by the River and the Shore Nathaniel Popper

Whenever Huck Finn steers his raft from the free currents of the river to the brambles on the banks of the Mississipi he renews his interaction with the society of the American south. When Twain's narrative comes ashore with Huck, the narrative...

Twain's Use of Dialect in a Case of Superstition Frances G. Tilney

"O, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do. Dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey skyers me so. Please to don't tell nobody 'bout it, sah, er ole mars Silas he'll scole me; 'kase he say dey ain' no witches. I...

Huck Finn's Coming of Age Ryan Pifer

With his novel about a young adolescent's journeys and struggles with the trials and questions associated with Huck's maturation, Mark Twain examines societal standards and the influence of adults that one experiences during childhood. The...

A Collision of Conscience and Morality Anonymous

Huckleberry Finn is a young boy who struggles with complex issues such as empathy, guilt, fear, and morality in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There are two different sides to Huck. One is the subordinate, easily influenced boy whom...

Political Propaganda: Huckleberry Finn and the Abolitionist Movement Jeanine Ancelet

"I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any...

Character Portrayals By Twain William Hudson

In "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" Mark Twain depicts various characters in the story according to his own moral and social beliefs. He portrays some characters as admirable or virtuous, and others as dislikeable or amoral. These portrayals...

Huckleberry Finn as a Picaresque Hero Jamee Pullins

Picaresque -- what a scary word. What can it mean? By definition, the word picaresque is an adjective, which describe a genre of prose fiction that depicts in realistic, often amusing detail about the adventures of a roguish hero of low social...

Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" as a Literary Response to Harriette Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Anonymous

When Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn after the Civil War, it was in part a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's pre-Civil War novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. While supporting many of Stowe's claims and motives, Twain also found fault...

Celebration of Freedom in Huckleberry Finn Sarah Simpler

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn so innocently reveals the potential nobility of human nature in its well-loved main characters that it could never successfully support anything so malicious as slavery. Huckleberry Finn and traveling companion Jim, a...

A Racial Revolution Anonymous

Written during a time in which racial inequality is the norm, and people of color are looked upon as lesser beings, Mark Twain, in his landmark novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, pens a character in Jim who is the epitome of restrained...

Analysis: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Alice Hsieh

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain paints, through the southern drawl of an ignorant village boy, the story of America as it existed in the quickly receding era of his own childhood. While written about childhood adventures,...

Examining Huckleberry Finn through Thoreau's Theory of Morality Anonymous

"My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses, and hypocrisies," Mark Twain once reflected. Morality does not flourish in such a society, as illustrated by its rampant...

American Literature's Gilded Carriage: A Reasonable Basis for the Institution of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as Required Reading Anonymous

Mark Twain's satiric masterwork The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has, over time, manifested itself as a novel of pronounced controversy proportionate to its tremendous literary worth. The story of an "uncivilized" Southern boy and the intrigues...

I Spare Miss Watson's Jim Ming Vandenberg

"But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody" (Twain 95). As is epitomized by the preceding quote, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain one of the central conflicts is that of the...

The "Savage" as the Civilizer April Strickland

In studying the development of the early American novel, one might find it helpful to compare Ishmael's relationship with Queequeg in "Moby Dick" to Huck's relationship with Jim in "Huckleberry Finn". In each case, the "savage" actually humanizes...

A Reasonable Basis for the Institution of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as Required Reading in High School Justin T. Cass

Mark Twain's masterwork, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has over time, created controversy proportionate to its tremendous literary worth. The story of an "uncivilized" Southern boy and a runaway slave traveling up the Mississippi River...

Realism and Romanticism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Robin Bates

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." This witty aphorism, although intended as a commentary on society, also reveals some of Mark Twain's beliefs about literature. By asserting that fiction must stay in the realm of...

Huck and Jim's Places in Society Anthony Anderson

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn correlates extremely well with novels like The Catcher in the Rye in that it illustrates the profound, omnipresent difficulties, with which characters like Huck and Holden must struggle as they are growing up....

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