Chapter Nineteen
So they’re back in the raft.
Huck spends some time describing the beautiful surroundings on the river. It’s quite lovely, should you feel inclined
to READ YOUR BOOK.
Also, he and Jim tend to be naked. A lot. Just go with it – it’s part of the whole "being one with nature" thing.
One morning, just as it’s getting light, Huck finds a canoe and paddles to shore to look for some berries.
Just then, two men come tearing through the bush, running towards the water. He thinks they’re after him or Jim, but
it turns out they’re on the lam themselves.
Of course Huck, having a soft spot for criminals, helps them hide and takes them aboard the raft with Jim.
OK, so one of these guys is old, around seventy, and pretty ratty-looking. The other is around thirty, and equally ratty.
We soon see that these guys don’t even know each other; they’re just two criminals that met while running away from
the law.
The younger man reveals that he was selling a kind of toothpaste that accidentally-kinda-sorta took the enamel off
people’s teeth.
The older man got in similar trouble for running a scam himself. He ran a "temperance revival meeting" (which is
much like Alcoholics Anonymous, except without the anonymity and it’s actually more a scam than helpful in any
way) until it got out that he was quite the drinker himself. So that was that.
The two men decide that working together would likely be more lucrative than scamming each other. It’s a match
made in con-artist heaven.
Then the young man starts crying and using ridiculous words like "Alas." He reveals that he’s actually royalty.
A duke, in fact.
Actually, he’s the Duke of Bridgewater.
Of course, this means that Huck and Jim have to call him "Your Lordship" and serve him and all that jazz.
The older man raises his eyebrows, calls the duke "Bilgewater," which is great, and declares that he himself is royalty,
too.
What a coincidence! The funny thing is, this guy is actually a king (Louis XVII, of France, he says), which in the
rock-paper-scissor world of fake-titles means he crushes the hell out of the duke.
Jim gets right to worshipping him, too.
It doesn’t take Huck too long to realize that these guys are total liars. But he says the easiest way to get along in life is
to not cause too many quarrels. If they want to be called "Your majesty," he says, it’s no skin off his nose.
This, he says, is something he learned from his Pap; with people like this, you just need to let them have their own
way. So he doesn’t tell Jim they’re lying.
Chapter Twenty
---Huck makes up a story to explain Jim’s presence. He’s not a runaway slave, he says, but since everyone thinks he is
it’s just easier for them to travel at night.
---The con-men inspect the raft and decide that, being royalty and all, they deserve the best sleeping spots inside the
makeshift wigwam.
---That night there’s a lightning storm, and Huck and Jim have to sit outside on the raft to keep watch while the
"royalty" sleep.
---Huck doesn’t mind; he likes watching the storm. He ends up going to sleep while Jim takes over the watch.
---Shortly after, the duke and the king start planning their con, a series of Shakespearian performances.
---The king says he doesn’t know anything about "play-actin’," so the duke explains to him all about Romeo and
Juliet. They decide that the king will play Juliet and the duke Romeo.
---The two cons head into town, informing Huck that they’re going to set up a way for them to travel in the daylight
without worrying about Jim.
---Huck, wisely, elects to go with them. Not that these guys aren’t trustworthy or anything.
---The town is nearly deserted, and the men are informed that everyone is at a "camp-meeting" about two miles away.
(It’s a religious gathering.)
---Huck and the king leave the duke at a printing-office (which is part of the plan to help Jim and head to this campmeeting.
---When they get there, the preacher is preaching, with lots of "Amen!" and "Hallelujah!"
---The king simply can’t resist. He begins preaching and shouting himself, and soon enough he’s got everyone worked
up in a religious frenzy and taking up a collection on his behalf (because he is a "reformed" and "changed" man,
thanks to the Lord, etc., etc).
---And that’s how the king returns to the raft with $87.75 , and a three-gallon jug of whisky.
---The duke shows up and for three seconds is all proud of himself for conning about nine bucks – that is, until he sees
the king’s score.
---He’s also printed up a bill for Jim that declares a $200 reward for him as a runaway slave.
---This way, he says, if anyone stops their raft, they can claim they’ve already captured him and are bringing him back
to capture their reward.
---That night, Jim tells Huck he hopes they’re not going to meet any more dukes or kings –he thinks two is plenty.
---Turns out, he’s been trying to get the king (of France, remember) to speak French.
---Unfortunately, Louis XVII has been in this country so long he plain old forgot his language.
Chapter Twenty-One
The duke and the king set to practicing their Shakespeare. The king is less than adept, and the duke informs him that
he should play Juliet more gently, as she doesn’t "bray like a jackass."
It looks like the duke, despite all his "expertise," can’t really keep his plays straight. In the midst of their Romeo and
Juliet, he starts calling himself "Richard III."
Then, for good measure, he completely jumbles Hamlet’s soliloquy ("To be or not to be; that is the bare bodkin").
It’s really quite hilarious and he manages to combine Macbeth and others in a lovely mixed salad of the greatest
Shakespearean speeches ever gone very, very wrong.
So one morning, around Arkansas, they decide it’s time to perform this sucker.
They print up some playbills using fake stage-names for themselves and charging 25 cents admission.
Huck gives a description of the unlucky town on which the duke and king have decided to bestow their acting talents.
Let’s just say it’s not exactly London, as far as culture goes.
He details the way they argue about borrowing "tobacker." Also the roads are made out of mud, which gives the place
real character.
Soon enough we’re introduced to the town’s most colorful character, a drunk named Boggs.
Boggs has a habit of getting wasted and riding through town on his horse threatening to kill everyone he doesn’t like.
Everyone is used to Boggs and his empty threats, so they’re more inclined to laugh at him than run screaming in the
other direction.
However, on this particular occasion, Boggs makes the mistake of threatening Sherburn, a tough guy who owns the
biggest store in town.
Sherburn comes out to the front of his store and gives Boggs a warning: leave by one o’clock, or…DIE!
Boggs, being Boggs, isn’t so much prone to logic at the moment. So he continues to insult Sherburn while standing
outside his store.
The townspeople, who are prone to logic and know that Sherburn is one serious man, hurry to get Boggs’s daughter in
the hope that she can calm her father down.
Several tension-filled minutes later, Sherburn comes out on his front porch, aims his pistol, shoots twice, kills Boggs,
and leaves. His work here is clearly done.
The townspeople lay a Bible under his head just as his sixteen-year-old daughter comes running onto the scene,
weeping and so forth.
Does this sound oddly Shakespearean to you? We think that’s not a coincidence.
Everyone who just showed up is all, "What happened!?" and one insensitive guy is like,"I’ll show you!" and reenacts
the scene, complete with "Bang! Bang!"
Then the angry mob decides that they should put their angry mob skills to use and lynch Sherburn.
Chapter Twenty-Two
So the angry mob makes its way over to Sherburn’s house.
Sherburn promptly steps out on his porch with a double-barreled gun, calm and composed.
He proceeds to stare the mob down, which is pretty impressive if you think about it.
Then he laughs at them and proceeds, in what again is an oddly Shakespearean moment, to deliver a soliloquy of
sorts.
Essentially, he says that the mob doesn’t have the balls to lynch anyone, much less a man like himself. They’re all
cowards, he says, except for that one guy Buck Harkness, but even he is only half of a man.
While we may think taunting an angry mob is a questionable decision, it seems to work in this case. The mob leaves
with its tails between its collective legs.
Well, since that’s all done with, let’s all go to the circus!
And what a fine circus it is – horsemen and dancers and beautiful women and all. About halfway through, a drunken
man tries to make his way into the center of the stage.
The ringmaster tries and fails to stop the drunk as he climbs on one of the circus horses, which tears about the stage.
While everyone else is laughing at the man’s near-death, Huck is concerned for his safety, at least until he jumps off
the horse, sober as can be, sheds seventeen suits from underneath his overcoat and reveals himself to be, actually, part
of the act.
That night, the duke and the king perform their Shakespeare to a group of poor, uneducated Arkansas townsfolk.
Wonder of wonders, they don’t get it. In fact, they don’t like it at all.
So the con artists rethink their plan. They put up a sign for the next night that essentially says "Low-Brow Comedy
Show! XXX-Rated!"
Analysis: Chapters 19-22
Jim’s reemergence on the raft and the encounter with the duke and the dauphin illustrate the shifting power
dynamics between blacks and whites as Huck and Jim move further down the river. Jim’s use of Huck’s whiteness to
threaten his fellow black men shows how corrupting racism and the slave system can be. We should remember that
although Jim acts maliciously, he does so to protect his own freedom, which makes it difficult to judge his actions
harshly. Shortly afterward, the encounter with the duke and the dauphin reminds Huck and Jim of their relative
powerlessness. Although the duke and the dauphin are criminals, they are free, adult, white men who have the power
to turn in both Huck and Jim. Despite Huck’s feeling that one is “mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft,” the
outside world and its evils remain a firmly established presence on the river. As Huck and Jim travel further, the
Mississippi becomes a source of foreboding rather than freedom, a conduit toward the American “heart of
darkness”—the plantations of the deep South.
Although these chapters involving the duke and the dauphin appear purely comic on the surface, a dark
commentary undercuts the comedy in virtually every episode. On the surface, the duke and the dauphin seem to be
just two bumbling con artists, but they present an immediate threat to Huck and Jim. The two men constantly and
cruelly toy with Jim’s precarious status as a runaway slave and even use this fact to their own advantage when they
print the fake leaflet advertising a reward for Jim’s capture. Moreover, the fact that the duke and the dauphin run their
first scam at a sacred event—a religious meeting—demonstrates their incredible malice. At the same time, however, it
also suggests that the religious revival meeting may be as much of a scam as any of the “royal” pair’s shenanigans.
Continuing the pattern that we have seen throughout Huckleberry Finn, nearly everyone Huck and Jim encounter on
the river is an unsavory character or a fake in one way or another.
Sherburn’s murder of the drunk and the subsequent mob scene continue this vein of simultaneous absurdity
and seriousness in the novel and contribute to the sense of moral confusion in the town. Although Sherburn’s shooting
of the drunk is cold-blooded, his speech to the angry mob is among the most profound meditations on human nature in
Huckleberry Finn. Sherburn’s criticisms of the cowardice and despicable behavior of his fellow citizens are accurate,
and his eloquence is impressive. Furthermore, much of what he has to say about cowardice relates directly to the
deplorable behavior of the people of St. Petersburg, which has put Huck and Jim in peril in the first place. All the
while, however, we are aware that this thoughtful speech comes from the mouth of a man who has just shot a
defenseless drunk. Like Huck, we are confused and disoriented.
Rather than provide some relief from this world of malice and chaos, Huck’s leisurely trip to the circus only
complicates matters further. Coming between the religious revival and the con men’s performance, the circus
illustrates just how fine the line is between spiritually enriching experience, legitimate entertainment, and downright
fraud. Huck’s concern for the seemingly drunk horseman is an elegantly constructed ending to this set of chapters. In
a world like the one Twain depicts in the novel, one can no longer distinguish between reality and fakery, doom and
deliverance.
Chapter Twenty-Three
And that pretty much does the trick. The place is packed the following night.
Fortunately, the audience loves it when during this performance of The Royal Nonesuch the king comes out naked
and prancing about.
Unfortunately, the audience doesn’t love it when after ten seconds of this tomfoolery, the show is over.
They’re all ready to lynch the duke and the king for taking their money without a real show to present. Lynching
seems to be everyone’s weekend sport.
Then one brilliant guy reminds them that they don’t want to look foolish in front of the rest of the townspeople for
wasting their money. A much better plan would be to get everyone else to see the show tomorrow and then lynch the
duke and the king.
The mob is all, "Good idea!"
So the duke and king clean up for a second night in a row.
On the third night, the townspeople arrive with a vengeance. And lots of rotten fruit for throwing purposes.
Unfortunately, the duke and the king have absconded with the money from all three nights’ worth of shows – $465.
So our gang of four is back on the raft and moving along the river once again.
In private (which we imagine is a difficult condition to obtain on a small raft with four people), Jim tells Huck that
these men are clearly "rapscallions."
Huck responds that all kings are rapscallions – like "Henry the VIII," who used to chop off all his wives’ heads.
Of course, Huck exaggerates a bit and generally mixes up his history, but still, the boy has a point.
That night, Jim stays awake during his watch, while Huck sleeps. When Huck wakes up at daybreak, he finds Jim in
the midst of misery.
Turns out, Jim is homesick for his family. He tells Huck a story about his daughter: he once asked her to close the
door to their house, but she ignored him. He asked her again, only to find that she still wouldn’t obey him. Mad as
hell, he hit her across the head, only to find out later that the child was deaf and couldn’t hear him in the first place.
Of course, Jim still feels terrible about the whole thing, especially now that he’s separated from his family.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The cons dress up Jim as an Arab so he won’t be discovered as a runaway slave.
Still, in case the outfit isn’t enough (they used some of the props from their King Lear supplies), they put a sign on
him that says "Sick Arab–but harmless when not out of his head."
The two con men are eager to pull off another con; they want to try The Royal Nonesuch gig again, but they’re afraid
news of the scam might have spread along the river by now.
The king decides he’ll just drop into the next village and "trust in Providence" to lead him the right way.
He and Huck dress themselves up nicely in some new clothes and decide to arrive in town by steamboat (for
appearance’s sake).
They soon run into a young man from the country who takes them towards the boat and spills all the town gossip on
the way. Turns out, a wealthy man named Peter Wilks has just died. While he was sick, he had sent for his brothers
William (a deaf mute) and Harvey (a preacher in England). But they haven’t shown up yet, which means they missed
the chance to say good-bye to their brother before he passed.
Still in town, however, are Peter’s three nieces – Mary Jane (19), Susan (15), and Joanna (14, has a harelip).
The king is immensely interested (mostly because dead people equals money, in the inheritance sense) and pumps this
guy for all the information he’s got.
When they get to the steamboat, the king bids good-bye to the young man but doesn’t get on the boat with Huck as
planned.
Instead, he sends Huck to fetch the duke, and the two conmen hatch a plot.
So of course the duke and king decide to play the part of the dead man’s brothers. They travel to town and make a big
stink over the fact that Peter died before they arrived. (The king is playing the part of the preacher, with a British
accent and all, and the duke plays William, the deaf mute.)
Watching the two men blubber on and lament their dear, beloved dead "brother," Huck comments that, "it was enough
to make a body ashamed of the human race." Well said, Huck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The first thing Huck tells us about the people in town is that Mary Jane, the oldest of the nieces, is beautiful. And a
red-head.
The nieces fall for the plot hook, line, and sinker. They embrace the duke and king as their long-absent uncles.
Huck thinks it’s disgusting the way the duke and king kneel and pray over the dead body, pretending to be distraught.
The king is so easily able to deceive the town because of all the information he got from the young man he met
earlier. The king repeats all the names he heard of the various townsfolk as though he read them in letters from Peter.
Then they get to the business of the will; Peter allotted $3,000 and the house to the three nieces, and another three
thousand and other property (worth seven grand) to his brothers.
The two conmen go down into the cellar where the six thousand in gold is hidden. They’re all Scrooge-McDuckexcited and get to counting it right away.
The money ends up being short: it’s not quite six thousand as it should be. Actually, it’s $415 short.
The cons are worried that the townsfolk will start to get suspicious if money is missing; they might think the brothers
stole it. So the duke suggests making up the deficit using their own money – the profits from The Royal Nonesuch.
Wait a minute…this smells like…like…FORESHADOWING!
The duke decides it would be even more impressively magnanimous of them to go upstairs and publicly give all
$6,000 to the girls.
The king does so, but being the king, of course, he has to couch the presentation in all sorts of pomp and circumstance
– British pomp, of course.
Unfortunately, despite his zeal and attempt to sound "cultured," his ignorance shines through. He keeps referring to
the "funeral orgies" they’re going to hold the next day.
The duke, who is apparently less of a fool than the king, keeps trying to get his attention and tell him that, actually,
the word is "obsequies."
The king then has to publicly explain to the world that "orgies" is the British term.
Everyone is all, "Oh, OK," except for one particularly not-stupid man, a doctor named Robinson, who acts quite the
skeptic.
Actually, he directly calls the king a fraud with "the worst imitation" of a British accent he’s ever heard.
The townspeople don’t believe him.
To prove her faith in the two men, Mary Jane gives them the $6,000 back and says she doesn’t even want a receipt.
Analysis: Chapters 23–25
Although the duke and the dauphin become increasingly malicious and cruel in their scams, Twain continues to
portray the victims of the con men’s schemes as unflatteringly as the con men themselves. The duke and the dauphin’s
production of The Royal Nonesuch, for example, is a complete farce, a brief, insubstantial show for which the
audience is grossly overcharged. But what makes the con men’s show a real success, however, is not any ingenuity on
their part—they are as inept as ever—but rather the audience’s own selfishness and vindictiveness. Rather than warn
the other townspeople that the show was terrible, the first night’s ticketholders would rather see everyone else get
ripped off in the same way they did. Thus, the con men’s scheme becomes even more successful because the
townspeople display vindictiveness rather than selflessness. In much the same way, the cruel scheme to steal the
Wilks family’s inheritance succeeds only because of the stupidity and gullibility of the Wilks sisters, particularly
Mary Jane. Admittedly, the grieving Wilks sisters likely are not in the best frame of mind to think rationally after their
loss. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the duke and the dauphin are hilariously inept in their role-playing and fake in
their accents, the only person who even begins to suspect them is Doctor Robinson—and Mary Jane dismisses his
advice without a thought. But even the Doctor comes across as annoyingly self-righteous. Together, these episodes
contribute to the overall sense of moral confusion in the world of Huckleberry Finn. Although the con men’s audacity
and maliciousness are sometimes shocking, Twain’s portrayal of the victims is often equally unsympathetic.
Jim, meanwhile, displays an honest sensitivity that contrasts him ever more strongly with the debased white characters
who surround him. Jim bares himself emotionally to Huck, expressing a poignant longing for his family and admitting
his errors as a father when he tells of the time he beat his daughter when she did not deserve it. Jim’s willingness to
put himself in a vulnerable position and admit his failings to Huck adds a new dimension of humanity to his character.
Jim’s nobility becomes even more apparent when we recall that he has been willing to forgive others throughout the
novel, even though he is unable to forgive himself for one honest mistake. As we see in these chapters, Jim’s honesty
and emotional openness have a profound effect on Huck. Having been brought up among racist white assumptions,
Huck is surprised to see that ties of familial love can be as strong among blacks as among whites. Although Huck’s
development is still incomplete—he still qualifies his observations a bit, noting that it doesn’t seem “natural” for Jim
to be so attached to his family—his mind is open and he clearly views Jim more as a human and less as a slave.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It seems in this grand charade that Huck has become the king’s valet, which he thinks is called a "valley."
They set up to stay in Peter’s old house, where all the nieces still live.
Everyone has dinner together that night, and Joanna, whom Huck undiplomatically calls "hare-lip" in his narrative,
pumps him for information about England (where supposedly they’ve all come from).
Huck digs himself into a hole making up contradictory stories about famous dead kings that go to his church in two
different places in England. Oops.
He ends up having to swear he’s telling the truth over a book. He does it only because it’s a dictionary and not the
Bible.
Meanwhile, Mary Jane overhears her sister giving their guest a hard time and lights into her about her lack of
manners.
This makes Huck feel guilty about letting the duke and king rob such a nice girl of her money.
So Huck decides that he just can’t allow such low-down thievery to take place right under his nose. He decides to
steal the money, hide it, escape, and tell Mary Jane the whole thing by letter once everything has quieted down and
the duke and king are out of the picture.
He heads upstairs and starts hunting around the king’s room for the dough.
Of course, this is a fictional story, and we all know that in stories anyone who’s ever hunting around someone else’s
room and hears footsteps has to hide in the closet.
So Huck is hanging out behind Mary Jane’s dresses in the back of the closet and listening in while the duke and the
king (owners of aforementioned footsteps) talk about their plan.
The duke is nervous, particularly since the doctor spoke out against them in public. He wants to take the cash and
split.
The king, on the other hand, isn’t satisfied with taking the cash when there’s almost $10,000 in property to be sold off
first.
The duke isn’t too comfortable with this idea, either – he doesn’t want to leave these poor orphans without a cent and
without a house.
Of course, the king has an answer for this: after they’ve left, when everyone figures out they’re not the real brothers,
any sale of property will be invalidated. In other words, the girls will get their stuff back, and whoever bought the
property in the first place will be the only ones to suffer.
The duke likes the sound of that, and the two men proceed to move the gold to a new hiding spot in the room. (Which
is great for Huck to know.)
When the conmen leave, Huck darts out of his hiding place and takes the gold.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Huck is all tiptoeing around downstairs when, quite expectedly, he hears more footsteps.
He darts into the parlor where the deceased Peter Wilks is laid out in his coffin. This seems a reasonable enough place
to hide the gold, so he shoves the bag in under the dead man’s hands.
Huck himself hides behind the door (of the parlor, not the coffin) while Mary Jane comes in and cries a bit over
Peter’s body.
Then Huck tiptoes out again and worries for a good three paragraphs or so about what he’s going to do now that the
money is tucked in with the stiff.
Then it’s time for the funeral. Huck spends some time telling us all about the undertaker, who "slid[es] around in his
black gloves with his softy soothering ways, […] making no more noise than a cat" and adding that "he was the
softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn’t no more smile to him than there is to a ham."
As the Reverend begins the service, there’s a big hullabaloo coming from the basement, and a dog is barking its head
off.
The undertaker takes care of it, surfacing from the cellar with a rat, which he lets everyone in on so they can satisfy
their curiosity as to why the dog was barking, which can be a distracting incident at any funeral, as we all know.
Huck very wisely comments that this was a good call on the undertaker’s part, and that really he’s the most popular
man in town.
Getting rather nervous as the ceremony draws to a close, Huck sweats like a madman while the
undertaker…slowly…nails the coffin closed without even looking inside.
Except Huck isn’t sure whether the money is still in the coffin or whether someone’s taken it out. Yes, that does
complicate things a bit.
The king declares that, really, he must be going, since his church back in England is in desperate need of their
preacher.
On account of his hurried departure, he has to start selling off the property right away, including the girls’ house,
since according to the plan, they’re coming with their two uncles back to England.
The king sells off the girls’ slaves without consideration for keeping the black families together. This puts everyone
off, since it’s basically an inhumane thing to do (even in this culture that sees black people as property).
The duke is a bit uneasy about this whole thing, but what with playing a deaf-mute and all, he doesn’t really say
anything.
The next day – the day of the planned property auction – the king and the duke wake Huck up and interrogate him. It
seems they’re missing their gold, and they’re trying to figure out if he’s the one that stole it.
Huck is all, "Not me," but he does say that he saw the black slaves (the ones that have just been sold and aren’t around
anymore) go into the king’s room.
The king is all "Oh no!" and Huck is all, "I’m so clever!" since the scapegoats aren’t there to get interrogated or
punished.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mary Jane is upset about the slaves being sold (families were broken up).
Huck, overcome by her misery and, more importantly, her beauty, breaks down and confesses everything to her.
Together they devise a plan. Or rather, Huck devises a plan and Mary Jane goes along with it.
The plan is, Mary Jane goes for the night to stay with Mr. Lothrop, because the girl’s got the poker face of a five-yearold with a sugar high. (In other words, she wouldn’t be able to hide her emotions from the duke and king.)
Huck says that there is someone else whose life hangs in the balance here (meaning Jim, though he doesn’t say as
much to Mary Jane), and that’s why he needs time to escape before the situation plays out.
He tells her that later that night she should sneak back to the house and shine a candle in the window. If Huck doesn’t
show up, it means he’s escaped (with Jim), and she can blow the whistle all she wants on the two frauds.
Huck then takes a piece of paper and writes down "Royal Nonesuch, Bricksville," so the duke and king can pay their
dues for that little scam as well.
Then he remembers the money; he doesn’t want to distress the girl by telling her the cash got stowed in the coffin
with Peter’s body, so he writes this down, too, and tells her not to look at the paper until she’s already on the road to
Mr. Lothrop’s.
Mary Jane is all, "OK, sounds good to me," so she takes off, adding that she’ll pray for Huck.
Huck scoffs (to us, not her) that this is a big job.
With Mary Jane gone, Huck runs into the other sister, Susan.
He doesn’t want to trust someone else with the details, so he just makes up a story about the mumps – it’s a really
horrible strain called pluribus-unummumps.
Anyway, by means of this and other lies, he makes sure Susan isn’t going to say anything to the duke and king about
her sister’s absence (she doesn’t want to delay their trip to England with their uncles while everyone sticks around to
see if Mary Jane contracted pluribus-unummumps).
Everything is going swimmingly until two men show up: the real brothers of the dead Peter Wilks.
Analysis: Chapters 26–28
These chapters mark several milestones in Huck’s development, as he acts on his conscience for the first time and
takes concrete steps to thwart the schemes of the duke and the dauphin. Although Huck has shown an increasing
maturity and sense of morality as the novel has progressed, he has been tentative in taking sides or action, frequently
hedging his bets and qualifying the statements he makes. He has chosen not to challenge or expose the duke and the
dauphin even though he has been aware from the start that they are frauds. Earlier, watching as the con men scam the
Wilks sisters in Chapter XXIV, Huck tells him that the sight makes him ashamed to be part of the human race.
Though this strong statement is, in itself, a step for Huck, he does not act on it until now. The first concrete action
Huck takes is his retrieval of the $6,000 in gold, which he places in Wilks’s coffin.
Despite these developments, however, Huck still has several lessons to learn and still struggles with the conflicting
messages he receives from society and from his personal experiences. Even though Huck rightly takes the money
from the con men, he does not give it to the Wilks sisters directly, and he still cannot bring himself to expose the con
men to the Wilkses. It is not until two chapters later that Huck, seeing Mary Jane crying in her bedroom, blurts out
that the duke and the dauphin are frauds. Also, Huck seems relatively unfazed when he hears that the dauphin’s plan
to liquidate the Wilks’s property will require the separation of a slave woman from her children. Huck confesses to
Mary Jane not because he is upset about the splitting of the slave family but because he feels bad that she is upset
about it. Twain implies, through Huck’s struggle with the issue, that the attitudes and assumptions that enable racism
and slavery in the South are deep-seated and difficult to overcome. Although Huck has made great strides, he still
struggles to make sense of the confusing world around him. His predicament is understandable: after all, a world in
which both seemingly good people (Miss Watson) and clearly evil people (the duke and the dauphin) are willing to
perpetrate great cruelty—separating a mother from her children—is a confusing world indeed.
Although these chapters are generally serious in tone, Twain maintains his characteristic mix of absurdity, suspense,
humor, and biting cynicism throughout. The funeral scene is one of Twain’s brilliant comic set pieces, complete with
screechy music, blubbering mourners, and a smarmy undertaker, all of which enable Huck to make wry observations
about human nature while he sweats out the fate of the money he has hidden in the coffin. Then, the climactic
appearance of an alternate set of Wilks brothers at the end of Chapter XXVIII sets the stage for more absurdity and
confrontation. The remarkable mix of serious social commentary and entertaining suspense and humor is what Twain
is perhaps best known for—and what has made Huckleberry Finn such an enduring work.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The duke and the king, who have no shame whatsoever, refuse to fold their hand and continue the charade. Instead,
they insist the newcomers are the frauds.
The townspeople, now thoroughly disgruntled and confused, can’t tell who to trust.
Some are particularly suspicious of the duke and king, including Levi Bell, the lawyer, and a big hulking man with no
name.
They grill the newly arrived brothers for a while, but they aren’t satisfied either way.
Then they ask the duke and king to hand over the bag of money until they can figure things out.
Of course, there is no money. The king explains that the slaves stole it just before they were sold.
Naturally, no one believes them. They start questioning Huck, who tries to tell them stories about England and fails
miserably in his lying.
They take out some old letters that Peter Wilks had saved; letters from his brother Harvey.
Now comes a handwriting test. Unfortunately, neither the king nor the real Harvey can match the writing.
The real Harvey explains that the letters were written by William and therefore not in his own hand. Rather
inconveniently, the real William has a broken hand and can’t supply a writing sample.
The real Harvey then has a brilliant idea – he knows what was tattooed on his brother’s chest; does the king know?
Although it is clearly time to fold the hand and leave the table, the king won’t give up. He responds that it is a thin,
blue arrow.
The real Harvey says that no, it was actually Peter’s initials (P-B-W).
The guys who buried the body don’t recall noticing any ink job, so clearly the only thing to do is dig up the body.
Everyone marches to the graveyard, with no chance of escape on the way.
Of course, the first thing they find when they open the coffin is the bag of gold.
Huck is all, "Later!" and runs away as fast as he can. While he’s sprinting by the house, he sees the light in the
window, which means Mary Jane is home and can soon clear up matters.
He makes it to the raft, where apparently Jim has been hanging out all this time, still dressed as a King-Lear-era Arab.
They push off – free at last!
The duke and king show up moments later in a skiff and join the raft. Not cool.
Chapter Thirty
Huck makes up a story to explain his running away so the duke and king won’t think he was trying to betray them.
Of course, then the question arises: how did the gold get into the coffin?
The duke and the king, reminding us that there is not only no honor, but no trust among thieves, turn on each other,
each thinking his partner was trying to make off with the cash.
The duke starts strangling the king.
To avoid asphyxiation, the king "confesses" to stealing and hiding the cash.
Then they get drunk together and pass out in the raft’s wigwam, with all forgotten and forgiven in a haze of booze.
Huck tells Jim the whole story.
Chapter Thirty-One
The duke and king gripe about being dead broke, since they made up the inheritance deficit out of their own pockets
that one time. In retrospect, that was a very, very poor choice.
So they decide to run another con. The king goes ashore to some Podunk town to see if the people there have gotten
wind of The Royal Nonesuch (assuming that news of the con has been traveling along the river).
The king fails to return, so Huck and the duke go looking for him and find him in a bar.
They start in with another typical quarrel, and Huck takes this opportunity to…run away.
He gets back to the raft and is all, "Let’s go Jim!" (déjà vu, anyone?).
Sadly, Jim isn’t there.
Huck goes to shore and inquires as to whether anyone, by chance, has seen a black man dressed in a combination of
King Lear and Arab attire.
Yes, in fact, someone has. This someone (just some random man from town) tells Huck that an older man – a stranger
– caught the runaway slave and sold him for $40.
Huck puts two and two together and realizes that the king sold Jim for a measly $40 to get his drunk on.
He then gets all pensive and torn-up inside about what to do now. He can’t write home to Miss Watson, since she’ll be
upset that he helped steal her slave.
Now that he thinks about it, this is really God slapping him in the face for stealing someone else’s property.
So he gets down on his knees to pray, determined to write a letter home explaining everything.
But Huck then concludes, quite insightfully, that "you can’t pray a lie." He realizes that he doesn’t want to send Jim
back home. He wants to help set him free.
So he concludes that, FINE, he’ll just GO to hell.
Then he hides the canoe underwater by loading it with rocks and sets out to the farm of Silas Phelps, the man to whom
the king sold Jim.
On the way, Huck runs into the duke nailing up a poster for The Royal Nonesuch.
Huck plays dumb ("Where’s Jim gone to?") and the duke confesses that 1) the king sold him, and 2) he drank up all
the money from the endeavor.
Huck begins crying, but does so because Jim was his property and it wasn’t their right to sell him.
The duke feels bad and says he’ll tell Huck where to find his slave: just go to Silas Ph–But then he cuts himself off,
thinking better of telling the truth. Instead, he tells Huck that Jim is on a farm forty miles in the wrong direction.
Huck, who knows better, thanks him and heads for Silas Phelps’s place.
Analysis: Chapters 29–31
In the aftermath of the Wilks episode, the duke and the dauphin lose the last vestiges of their inept, bumbling charm
and become purely menacing and dangerous figures. Although the standoff over the Wilks estate ultimately is
resolved without any physical or financial harm to anyone, the depth of greed and sliminess the con men display is
astonishing. Then, just when it appears the duke and the dauphin can sink no lower, the catastrophe that Twain has
foreshadowed for the last few chapters materializes when Huck discovers that Jim is missing. Just as it has throughout
Huckleberry Finn, evil follows Huck and Jim onto the raft and thwarts their best attempts to escape it.
Jim’s capture significantly matures Huck, for it convinces him to break with the con men for good and leads him to a
second moment of moral reckoning. Huck searches the social and religious belief systems that white society has
taught him for a way out of his predicament about turning Jim in. In the end, Huck is unable to pray because he
cannot truly believe in these systems, for he cares too much about Jim to deny Jim’s existence and humanity. Huck’s
thoughts of his friendship with Jim lead him to listen to his own conscience, and, echoing his sentiments from Chapter
I, Huck resolves to act justly by helping Jim and “go to hell” if necessary. Once again, Huck turns received notions
upside down, as he figures that even hell would be better than the society in which he lives. Huck then sets out on his
first truly adult endeavor—setting off to free Jim at whatever moral or physical cost to himself. It is vital to note that
Huck undertakes this action with the belief that it might send him to hell. Though he does not articulate this truth to
himself, he trades his fate for Jim’s and thereby accepts the life of a black man as equal to his own.