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Long summary and analysis of Huckleberry Finn
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Chapter1 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer leaves off. At the end of the previous novel, Huck and Tom find a treasure of twelve thousand dollars which they divide. Judge Thatcher takes their money and invests it in the bank at six percent interest, so that each boy earns a dollar a day on their money. Huck Finn moves in with the Widow Douglas, who has agreed to care for him. Huckleberry Finn is the narrator of this story, and he starts off by describing his life to the reader. After moving in with the Widow Douglas, he soon runs away because she tries to "civilize" him: she buys him new clothes and begins teaching him the Bible. Tom Sawyer goes after Huck and convinces him to return after promising that they will start a band of robbers together. Huck, even though he returns, still complains about the fact that he must wear new clothes and eat only when the dinner bell rings, something he was not used to while growing up. The Widow Douglas is careful to teach Huck the Bible and to forbid him from smoking. Her attentions towards him are complemented by her sister, Miss Watson, who also lives in the house. Miss Watson is a spinster who decides that Huck must get an education. She tries to teach him spelling and she also lectures him on behaving well so that he will go to heaven. Miss Watson warns Huck that if he does not start behaving he will go to hell. However, Huck is more impressed by her description of hell which he thinks sounds like a lot more fun than the lessons she keeps trying to teach him. Huck goes to and lights a candle. He starts to feel extremely lonesome and whenever he hears a night sound, such as an owl, a dog or a whippowill, he equates the sound with death. At one point he flicks a spider and accidentally causes the spider to burn up in the candle flame, which he takes to be a very bad omen. Huck waits until midnight, and at that time a soft meow comes from outside his window. Huck replies and then climbs out of the window and drops to the ground where he meets Tom Sawyer. Chapter 1 Analysis: The first sentence introduces Huck in a colloquial, friendly manner: "You don't know about me." This is important because it sets up Huck as the narrator right from the first words. This is clearly going to be a book told from his point of view. In addition, Twain is careful to add the comment that not knowing about Huck's adventures in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer "ain't no matter." This comment is meant to assure Twain's readers that they can read this book without any prior knowledge of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Living with the Widow Douglas is a form of nurture for Huck Finn; she wants to raise him as a civilized child. This immediately sets up the main theme of the novel, the conflict between civilization and freedom. Twain tends to follow the beliefs of Jen-Jacques Rousseau in suggesting that civilization corrupts rather than improves human beings. For example, right in this first chapter, Huck is forced to change his natural character into what the Widow Douglas demands him to become. He feels cramped in new clothes, and he hates having to eat dinner when a dinner bell rings. This new lifestyle is simultaneously cleverly contrasted to his old lifestyle. For example, the "barrel of odds and ends" implies a pig's slop bucket; Twain originally meant to indicate that Huck had to compete for food with pigs. Thus, he also creates a sub-theme to the conflict between civilization and nature: namely Huck's obsession with food which is pronounced throughout the book, such as later on Jackson's Island, on the raft, or in the various households he visits. A key literary element in this novel is irony. Huck is among the most ironic characters ever created, and he frequently expresses his irony via sarcasm. For example, Huck states, "I wanted to smokeŠBut she wouldn't [let me]Š And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself." In this passage Huck is pointing out the hypocrisy of the Widow Douglas; although she forbids him to smoke, she still uses snuff (a form of tobacco) for herself. The scene where Miss Watson tries to warn Huck about hell is made comic through the juxtaposition of hell with her horrible lessons. Huck has such a hard time learning spelling from her that he remarks that hell sounds like a lot more fun. This is an important scene because it is meant to introduce the reader to Huck's youth; only a young child would rationally choose hell over heaven. A major theme that permeates the rest of the book is that of superstition. The first chapter provides several examples of Huck's superstitious side, both in terms of how he interprets the night sounds (as death) and in terms of the spider he kills. His response to the dead spider is to immediately attempt a counter-charm, even though he is aware that there is no way of undoing the bad luck. The theme of superstition stands in contrast to Huck's typical character features. Up until the end of chapter one, Huck has come across as extremely rational and logical. Even his response to Miss Watson that he would prefer hell over heaven is grounded in logical terms that the readers can understand. Superstition, on the other hand, is completely irrational. Throughout the novel, whenever Huck is confronted by superstition he will act in a manner that is contrary to his usual manner. The use of superstition is two-fold. It primarily serves to give the reader insight into Huck's character by showing him to be somewhat naive and gullible. Within this context, however, superstition symbolizes the fear of the unknown; Huck is most superstitious whenever he is extremely worried about his future, such as in this opening chapter and later when he is on Jackson's Island. Second, superstition also serves to foreshadow events throughout the novel. Thus, killing a spider in this chapter, and later spilling the salt, does in fact lead to bad luck, in the form of Pa returning home. Chapter 2 Summary: While the boys are sneaking away, Huck trips over a root and makes noise when he falls. Miss Watson's slave Jim hears the sound and comes outside to look around. Jim sits down right between where Huck and Tom are hiding and decides to wait until he catches them. However, he soon gets tired and falls asleep against a tree. Tom then wants to play a trick on Jim. He and Huck climb into the house and steal three candles, for which they leaves a nickel as "pay". Then Tom quietly makes his way to Jim, takes off Jim's hat, and places it on a tree branch above Jim's head. He soon returns and tells Huck what he did. After Jim woke up he thought he had been bewitched, and he always kept the nickel as a token around his neck after that. According to Huck, Jim used to tell all the other slaves that he had been ridden around the world by some witches, and that the nickel was given to him as a token by the devil. Tom and Huck sneak down to the river and meet some of the other boys who are supposed to be members of Tom's robber band. Together they steal a skiff and float down the river several miles to a spot with a cave. Tom shows the boys a hidden room in the cave which they make their robber headquarters. Tom then reads them an oath that he has written, taken mostly from robber books and pirate stories. The boys argue over what Huck Finn's role in the gang will be, because Huck does not have a family for them to kill in case he reveals any of the gang's secrets. Huck finally offers them Miss Watson in place of his real parents, and the boys then sign an oath in blood to join the band. Tom is elected the captain. Tom explains that as robbers, they will only attack carriages and take the stuff inside. The men will be killed and the women will be brought back to the cave. He also mentions that they will ransom some of the people, because that is what they do in books, although he has no idea what "ransom" means. After that, all the boys agree to meet again soon. They return home exhausted and Huck climbs into bed having muddied up his new clothes, and feeling dead tired. Chapter 2 Analysis: This chapter serves to introduce the other boys in Huck's town. It is important to notice that although Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are best friends, the other boys are more than willing to cut Huck out of Tom's gang. The fact that Huck is not very popular helps to explain his feelings of isolation in the town; the adults keep trying to "sivilize" him, and the other boys tend to ignore him. Twain puts together an interesting juxtaposition of theft with honor in this chapter. These contradictory ideas are conveniently merged by Tom Sawyer, who logically explains to the other boys that robbery is honorable. Tom's definition appears to be complete nonsense. However, as the reader will see by the end of the book, this scene actually parallels the ending, where Huck and Tom "steal" Jim out of slavery. Thus, Twain actually shows how honor and robbery can go together: when someone is stealing a slave out of slavery. The gang can be viewed as a childish form of society as a whole (synecdoche): Tom creates a set of rules, ideas, and morals that he expects the boys to adhere to. Notice that all of Tom Sawyer's ideas about the gang he gets from books. Books thus form a foundation for civilization; using books, people like Tom are able to create the society that they want to live in. Twain is ironically mocking the adult world in this chapter by showing that although the adult world relies on books like the Bible to create their civilization, they could just as easily create a society with pirate and robber books. The theme of slavery is introduced in this chapter when Tom and Huck interact with Miss Watson's slave Jim. Slavery will gradually become a larger issue as the novel progresses. It is important to note Huck's views towards slavery at this point so that they may be compared to his views later on. His comment that Jim "was most ruined, for a servant" is a sign that he still supports slavery; only later in the novel will Huck start to question the idea that Jim should be a servant at all. Chapter 3 Summary: The next morning Huck gets a lecture from Miss Watson for getting his clothes dirty. She takes him into a closet to pray, and tells him to pray every day so he will get what he wants. Huck tries to pray daily, but he becomes disillusioned when all he gets is a fish-line with no hooks. When he asks Miss Watson about it, she tells him praying brings spiritual gifts. Unable to see any use for that sort of thing, Huck decides that praying is probably not worth his time. A drowned man is found in the river, and the townspeople believe is Huck's Pa. Huck is unconvinced after he hears the man was found floating on his back. He remarks that everyone knows dead men float face down, so this must have been a woman in man's clothing that looked like his Pa. Tom Sawyer's robber band falls apart after a few weeks because the boys get bored of pretending they are robbing people. The only real escapade is when they wreck a Sunday School picnic and chase some of elementary school children away. They have to clear out when the teacher arrives, however. Tom pretends that during the battle there were Arabs and elephants and that the boys were attacking a large army, but Huck is too practical to believe him. When Huck asks why they could not see all the elephants, Tom explains that some magicians must have turned the whole army into a Sunday School picnic. Tom then tells Huck all about genies in bottles, and how the genies must obey whoever rubs the bottle. Huck gets an old lamp and tries to find a genie, but when it fails he decides that the genies were just another of Tom's lies. Chapter 3 Analysis: Huck's rationality and literalness forms the basis of this chapter. Twain goes to great lengths to show that Huck is a logical thinker who only believes what he can see with his own eyes. Thus, Tom's band becomes boring when all they do is attack turnip wagons and Sunday School picnics. Unlike Tom Sawyer, Huck is unable to make-believe that the picnic is really an Arab army. The same thing happens with respect to Huck's Pa; Huck decides that Pa cannot be dead because the dead person was floating on its back rather than its face, meaning that it must have been a woman. This focus on rationality and literalness is used by Twain to further attack religion. Huck is told to pray for what he wants, but when he prays and does not get anything, he decides that praying is pointless. Huck also thinks about the Christian concept of always helping other people. When he realizes that Christianity seems to offer him no personal advantage in life, he quickly rejects it as quite pointless. Chapter 4 Summary: Huck spends the next three months living with the widow and getting used to his new life. He starts to attend school remarks that, "I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too." Everything goes fairly well until one day when Huck accidentally overturns a salt-shaker at the breakfast table. Miss Watson does not let him throw any salt over his left shoulder (as a way of avoiding the bad luck) and as a result Huck starts to get worried that something bad will happen. As soon as Huck leaves the house, he notices boot prints in the fresh snow. Upon closer inspection he realizes that there is a cross on the left boot-heel, meaning that Huck's Pa had returned. Aware that Pa is probably after his money (the $6,000 that he got from sharing the treasure with Tom), Huck goes to Judge Thatcher and begs the Judge to take all his money as a gift. The Judge is quite surprised by the request, but when Huck refuses to reveal why he wants to give away his money, Judge Thatcher agrees to "buy" it for one dollar, saying he will take the money "for a consideration." Huck, still quite worried over what is going to happen now that Pa has returned, goes to the Miss Watson's slave Jim. Jim takes out a hair-ball in order to do some magic with it for Huck. When the hair-ball refuses to work properly, Jim suggest that Huck give it some money. Huck offers a counterfeit quarter, which Jim takes and places under the ball. Jim tells Huck that Pa is torn between two angels, a good white angel and a bad black angel. He also informs Huck that Huck will have considerable pain in his life and at the same time considerable joy. Huck returns to his room that night and finds his Pa sitting there. Chapter 4 Analysis: Superstition permeates this entire chapter and foreshadows many of the future events. First there is the incident with the salt shaker which leads Huck to assume that there will soon be bad luck. This is immediately followed by Huck finding the cross on the boot-print, a sign that his Pa has returned. It is a sign of Huck's peculiar logic that he chooses to fight superstition with more superstition, namely Jim's hair-ball. What is interesting about Jim's predictions with the hair-ball is that this is the first time that Twain foreshadows the entire rest of the novel. Notice that Jim mentions "two gals flyin'" around Huck's life, a light one and a dark one, a rich one and a poor one. This is of course a reference to Huck and to Jim, since Huck is rich and Jim is poor. Jim's comment that Huck should avoid the water will go unheeded when both of them end up running away downriver. Huck reinforces a split between what can be termed "natural learning" versus "book learning." He has been brought up with only "natural learning," such as how to survive in the wild. This can be contrasted with Tom Sawyer's "book learning," which has little actual application in Huck's life, and which Twain makes fun of by portraying the silliness of Tom's robber band. The usefulness of Huck's type of learning is constantly tested, as when he spots the boot marks in the snow. This split between natural and book learning will be brought to a head in the next chapter, when Huck encounters Pa directly. The theme of money is introduced again, this time in the context of paying for a fortune-telling. Jim has Huck pay his hair-ball so that it will start to make predictions. In the process, Jim come across as greedy, wanting to make money even if it involves taking a counterfeit quarter. The issue of money will be one that splits Jim and Huck during their travels down the river; Huck will never understand Jim's obsession with making money. Chapter 5 Summary: Huck arrives back at his room and sees his Pa sitting in a chair. He describes Pa as filthy, poor man who used to scare him a great deal. Now, however, Huck is no longer scared of Pa, and instead is able to see how old his father has gotten. Pa harasses Huck for wearing good clothes and going to school. He then accuses Huck of putting on airs and acting better than his own father. Pa remarks that no one in his family could ever read, and that he certainly does not want his son to be smarter than he is. He demands that Huck read him something, and soon becomes quite furious when he realizes that Huck is in fact able to read. Pa then threatens to beat Huck if he ever catches him near the school again. He makes Huck hand over the dollar that Judge Thatcher "paid" him and then climbs out the window to go drinking in the town. The next day Pa goes to Judge Thatcher and tries to make the Judge give him Huck's money. The Judge refuses, and he and the widow take a case to court in an effort to get Huck legally placed with one of them. The judge is unfortunately new to the town and refuses to separate Huck from his father. Judge Thatcher, realizing he cannot win, gives Huck some money which Huck immediately gives to Pa; Pa soon gets royally drunk and is placed in jail for a week. The new judge then sympathetically takes Pa into his home, dresses him well, and tries to reform him. After thinking that he has reformed Pa, the Judge goes to bed. That night Pa sneaks out of the new judge's house and buys some alcohol. By morning he is so drunk that he breaks his arm in two places and nearly freezes to death on the porch. The new judge is livid at this betrayal of his trust and comments that the only way to reform Pa is with a shotgun. Chapter 5 Analysis: The issue of Huck's "natural learning" versus his new "book learning" comes to a dramatic climax in this scene. Pa is furious at the thought that in addition to knowing a great deal of "natural learning," Huck is also getting a real education. This reflects badly on Pa because it reinforces how ignorant he is. Thus, Pa makes the comment that no one in Huck's family could ever read. Pa's threat that he will beat Huck if Huck ever goes to school again is designed to keep his son as ignorant as he is. This chapter also highlights one of Twain's favorite themes, which is mocking Christian morality. All of these morals are espoused by the new judge, who supports the idea that family should be kept together and the idea that reform is better than jail. Thus, Huck is forced to stay under the legal guardianship of Pa, and the judge decides that he can reform Pa and make a good man out of him. The attempt by the judge to reform Pa is a dismal failure; not only does Pa wreck his room, but he also gets so drunk that he breaks his arm. Twain thus undermines the judge's Christian morals, and instead shows that under certain conditions more radical measures are necessary. Summary of Chapter 6 through Chapter 10 Chapter 6 Pa starts hanging out around the town in order to make Huck give him some of the money every few days. When the widow tells Pa to get away from her property, he kidnaps Huck and takes him three miles upriver to a log cabin. Pa carefully locks the door and never leaves Huck's side without making sure that Huck cannot escape. Huck enjoys being free from school but soon gets upset that he is being beaten so much. Huck then discovers a part of a saw which is missing its handle. He starts to saw off a log in the rear corner of the cabin, but is frustrated by Pa's reemergence. Pa is drunk after having been to the town to buy whiskey, and he makes Huck go outside and pick up all the supplies he bought while there. Pa then proceeds to drunkenly curse everyone he has ever met and spends a while cursing the government. Huck was hoping to escape after Pa fell asleep, but unluckily for him Pa starts to have nightmares. At one point Pa jumps up thinking he is covered with snakes. Later he dreams that the angel of death is after him and he starts to chase Huck around the cabin with a knife. Huck runs for his life and manages to survive because the older man falls asleep again. Huck then takes down the gun and holds it for protection. Chapter 7 Pa and Huck go out into the woods to hunt for game. While there Huck sees an abandoned canoe on the river and jumps in to get it. When he realizes that Pa had not seen him get the canoe, he hides it in a little stream and returns to Pa. Huck next fetches a wooden raft from the river with timber that is worth about ten dollars. Pa locks Huck into the cabin and takes the raft to the town in order to sell it. Huck quickly finishes his sawing and climbs out of the cabin. He takes everything worth any money to his canoe. Then he axes down the front door and goes hunting for game. He shoots a wild pig, butchers it inside the cabin, and spreads the blood on his shirt and the floor. He also carefully lays some of his hairs on the now bloody ax to make it appear as if he has been killed. Huck then cuts open a sack of flour and leaves a trail which indicates that the killer left via a lake that does not connect to the river. Thus he prevents anyone from searching along the river for anything more than his dead body. As Huck is finishing everything, a man starts to return in a skiff. Huck recognizes that it is Pa returning early and that he is sober. Immediately Huck jumps into the canoe and pushes off. He floats downstream until he reaches Jackson's Island, a deserted stretch of land in the middle of the river. He ties up the canoe and settles down to get some sleep. Chapter 8 Huck wakes up on Jackson's Island late the next day and hears a cannon being fired. A ferryboat filled with his friends comes down the river firing a cannon to try and bring his carcass to the surface. At the same time they have set loaves of bread filled with mercury afloat, hoping that the bread will go to where his body would be. Sure enough, Huck manages to snag one of the loaves and enjoys eating it for lunch. After a few days Huck starts to explore the island. While following a large snake he accidently stumbles into a still smoking campfire. Out of fear he retreats back to his campsite and paddles over to the Illinois side of the river. However, he soon returns for the night and sleeps poorly out of fright. The next morning Huck decides to find out who else is on the island with him.
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