Chapters 35-42
 Tom believes there are certain obstacles that Jim must
overcome in order to escape, based on silly ideas about
prisoners that he has read in adventure books.
 Example: Although they could easily get Jim out be
removing a board nailed across his window, Tom
insists that he dig his way out because it is more
adventuresome.
 If they would have followed Huck’s plan, the three of
them could have been on the raft that same night.
 Jim does not understand the complicated scheme for
his escape, but goes along with it.
 Twain’s satiric point is that whites do NOT know better
than blacks.
 Huck goes along with Tom; he is like the good person
who does not speak out against evil. Good people
often are opposed to evil, but don’t do anything about
it.
 Tom does not criticize what he reads in Romantic
adventure books; he makes Jim do crazy things
because that’s the way it’s done in the books.
 Tom writes anonymous letters warning of trouble to
Silas and Sally. He pretends to be a member of a band
of desperate cutthroats who are planning to steal Jim.
The letter’s author claims to have found religion, so he
wants to offer information to help stop the theft.. He
does this to stop Silas from advertising in the papers
about the runaway slave and also because the books he
has read say to do so. (Anonymous letters often tip off
the guards about an escape attempt)
 Fifteen farmers with guns gather at the Phelps’ house
because of the letters.
 The men begin to enter the shed to lie in wait for the
cutthroats and Tom, Huck, and Jim escape through the
hole they cut in the wall of the shed and take their canoe to
the island where the raft is hid.
 Tom gets shot in the leg during the escape (because of his
own foolishness) but is delighted with the souvenir of his
adventure.
 Jim and Huck are concerned about Tom’s wound and Jim
insists on getting Tom a doctor, even though it will risk his
freedom; this confirms Huck’s belief that Jim is “white
inside.”
 Huck finds a doctor and sends him to the island where Tom
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and Jim are (Jim is hidden).
Huck bumps into Uncle Silas and gets taken home (Aunt
Sally is very worried).
Tom is brought back by the doctor and some men who have
Jim in chains.
Although some of the men want to hang Jim, the doctor
tells them how Jim sacrificed his freedom to help him
remove the bullet from Tom’s leg.
When Tom wakes up, he is excited to tell of how he and
Huck set Jim free; he is horrified to find out that Jim has
been recaptured.
 Tom explains that Miss Watson died two months ago
and in her will, she set Jim free, regretting she ever
considered selling him down the river; this explains
how Tom wanted to help set Jim free, despite his upbringing (he knew he was already free, therefore he
wasn’t doing anything wrong).
 Aunt Polly arrives from Missouri after receiving a letter
from Aunt Sally mentioning that Sid had arrived with
Tom- she blows the whistle on their false identities.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/teachers/huck/essay
.html
 Part of what makes the book so effective is that Huck is
too innocent and ignorant to understand what’s wrong
with his society and what’s right about his own
transgressive behavior.
 Although as a child, Clemens held some of the same
beliefs that Huck does, his consciousness changed as he
grew into adulthood. He developed moral awareness on
the subject of race and racism, which can be charted
through his writings, his marriage into an abolitionist
family, and his exposure to figures like Frederick
Douglass.
 Something new happened in Huck Finn that had never
happened in American literature before. It was a book
that served as a Declaration of Independence from the
genteel English novel tradition. It allowed a different kind
of writing to happen: a clean, crisp, no-nonsense, earthy
vernacular kind of writing that jumped off the printed
page with unprecedented immediacy and energy; it was a
book that talked.
 Huck’s voice, combined with Twain’s satiric genius,
changed the shape of fiction in America, and AfricanAmerican voices had a great deal to do with making it
what it was.
 We continue to live, as a nation, in the shadow of racism while
being committed on paper to principles of equality. As Ralph
Ellison observed, it is this irony at the core of the American
experience that Mark Twain forces us to confront head on.
 History books teach that slaveholding was evil and injustice
was the law of the land. But they don’t require you to look the
perpetrators of that evil in the eye and find yourself looking at
a kind, gentle, good-hearted Aunt Sally. They don’t make you
understand that it was not the villains who made the system
work, but the ordinary folks, the good folks, the folks who did
nothing more than fail to question the set of circumstances
that surrounded them, who failed to judge that evil as evil and
who deluded themselves into thinking they were doing good,
earning safe passage for themselves into heaven.
 Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the values
of his society, and while he is unable to refute those values, he
makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's
friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to
the things he has been taught. Mark Twain in his lecture notes
proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained
conscience.”
 To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery, Twain
has Huck's father enslave him, isolate him, and beat him.
When Huck escapes – which anyone would agree was the right
thing to do – he then immediately encounters Jim "illegally"
doing the same thing.
 the institution of slavery and the racist beliefs of the white
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antebellum society
religious hypocrisy
the ineffectiveness of government
the feuds that existed between southern families
con artists and the gullibility of their victims
mob mentality
the Romantic philosophy and literature
man’s inhumanity to his fellow man
superstition
the conventions/rules of society