The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Tom Sawyer
Plot Summary
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is about a young boy, Huck, in
search of freedom and adventure. The shores of the Mississippi River provide the
backdrop for the entire book.Huck is kidnapped by Pap, his drunken father. Pap kidnaps
Huck because he wants Huck's $6000. Huck was awarded $6000 from the treasure he
and Tom Sawyer found in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huck finally escapes from the
deserted house in the woods and finds a canoe to shove off down the river. Instead of
going back to the widow's house, he decides to run away. He is sick of all of the
confinement and civilization that the window enforces upon him. He comes across Jim,
Miss Watson's slave, and together, they spend nights and days journeying down the
river, both in search of freedom.
While traveling on a raft down the river, Huck and Jim have many adventures and during
many long talks, become best of friends. They find a house with a dead man. They end
up stealing many things from the house. They find a wrecked ship, and go on it, only to
be mixed up with murderers. They get away with money and some other goods. They
get separated from each other in the heavy fog, but eventually find each other. A
steamboat crashes into their raft and Jim and Huck are separated again. Huck has a runin with the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, two families at war with each other. He
is reunited with Jim shortly after this. Then, they meet the King and the Duke, and get
into a good deal of trouble performing plays. The King and the Duke pretend to be Peter
Wilks' long lost brothers from England and try to steal all of the money left behind in his
will. They escape before they are caught. Huck finally gets rid of them, but is left to
search for Jim, who gets sold by the King. He ends up at Tom Sawyer's Aunt Sally's
house, where Tom and Huck rescue Jim.
Through all of the adventures down the river, Huck learns a variety of life lessons and
improves as a person. He develops a conscience and truly feels for humanity. The
complexity of his character is enhanced by his ability to relate so easily with nature and
the river.
Summary Analysis of Character List
Huckleberry Finn -The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen-yearold son of the local drunk of St. Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River.
Frequently forced to survive on his own wits and always a bit of an outcast, Huck is
thoughtful, intelligent (though formally uneducated), and willing to come to his own
conclusions about important matters, even if these conclusions contradict society’s
norms. Nevertheless, Huck is still a boy, and is influenced by others, particularly by his
imaginative friend, Tom.
Tom Sawyer -Huck’s friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer. Tom serves as a foil to
Huck: imaginative, dominating, and given to wild plans taken from the plots of
adventure novels, Tom is everything that Huck is not. Tom’s stubborn reliance on the
“authorities” of romance novels leads him to acts of incredible stupidity and startling
cruelty. His rigid adherence to society’s conventions aligns Tom with the “civilizing”
forces that Huck learns to see through and gradually abandons.
Jim- One of Miss Watson’s household slaves. Jim is superstitious and occasionally
sentimental, but he is also intelligent, practical, and ultimately more of an adult than
anyone else in the novel. Jim’s frequent acts of selflessness, his longing for his family,
and his friendship with both Huck and Tom demonstrate to Huck that humanity has
nothing to do with race. Because Jim is a black man and a runaway slave, he is at the
mercy of almost all the other characters in the novel and is often forced into ridiculous
and degrading situations.
Pap-Huck’s father, the town drunk. Pap is a wreck when he appears at the beginning of
the novel, with disgusting, ghostlike white skin and tattered clothes. The illiterate Pap
disapproves of Huck’s education and beats him frequently. Pap represents both the
general debasement of white society and the failure of family structures in the novel.
Miss Watson - One of the wealthy sisters who live in a large house in St. Petersburg and
who adopt Huck. The gaunt and severe Miss Watson is the most prominent
representative of the hypocritical religious and ethical values Twain criticizes in the
novel.
Widow Douglas The other wealthy sister who is somewhat gentler in her beliefs and has
more patience with the mischievous Huck. When Huck acts in a manner contrary to
societal expectations, it is the Widow Douglas whom he fears disappointing.
Aunt Polly - Tom Sawyer’s aunt and guardian and Sally Phelps’s sister. Aunt Polly
appears at the end of the novel and properly identifies Huck, who has pretended to be
Tom, and Tom, who has pretended to be his own younger brother, Sid.
The duke and the dauphin - A pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue as they are
being run out of a river town. The older man, who appears to be about seventy, claims
to be the “dauphin,” the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French throne. The
younger man, who is about thirty, claims to be the usurped Duke of Bridgewater.
Although Huck quickly realizes the men are frauds, he and Jim remain at their mercy, as
Huck is only a child and Jim is a runaway slave.
Judge Thatcher-The local judge who shares responsibility for Huck with the Widow
Douglas and is in charge of safeguarding the money that Huck and Tom found at the end
of Tom Sawyer.
The Grangerfords - A family that takes Huck in after a steamboat hits his raft,
separating him from Jim. The kindhearted Grangerfords, who offer Huck a place to stay
in their tacky country home, are locked in a long-standing feud with another local
family, the Shepherdsons.
The Wilks family - At one point during their travels, the duke and the dauphin
encounter a man who tells them of the death of a local named Peter Wilks, who has left
behind a rich estate. The man inadvertently gives the con men enough information to
allow them to pretend to be Wilks’s two brothers from England, who are the recipients
of much of the inheritance. The duke and the dauphin’s subsequent conning of the
good-hearted and vulnerable Wilks sisters is the first step in the con men’s increasingly
cruel series of scams, which culminate in the sale of Jim.
Silas and Sally Phelps - Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle, whom Huck coincidentally
encounters in his search for Jim after the con men have sold him. Sally is the sister of
Tom’s aunt, Polly. Essentially good people, the Phelps nevertheless hold Jim in custody
and try to return him to his rightful owner. Silas and Sally are the unknowing victims of
many of Tom and Huck’s “preparations” as they try to free Jim
General Themes

Racism

Slavery

Intellectual and moral education

The hypocrisy of “civilized” society
Important Symbols

The Mississippi River

Floods;

Shipwrecks

The natural world
Author Information
Christened as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835
in the small river town of Florida, Missouri, just 200 miles from Indian Territory. Twain
died on April 21, 1910, having survived his children Langdon, Susan and Jean as well as
his wife, Olivia. In his lifetime, he became a distinguished member of the literati, and
was honored by Yale, the University of Missouri, and Oxford with literary degrees. With
his death, many volumes of his letters, articles, and fables were published, including:
The Letters of Quintas Curtius Snodgrass (1946); Simon Wheeler, Detective (1963); The
Works of Mark Twain: What is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings (1973); and Mark
Twain's Notebooks and Journals (1975-79). Perhaps more than any other classic
American writer, Mark Twain is seen as a phenomenal author, but also as a personality
that defined an era.
Key Facts
Type of work · Novel
Genre · Picaresque novel (episodic, colorful story often in the form of a quest or
journey); satire of popular adventure and romance novels; bildungsroman (novel of
education or moral development)
Time and place written · 1876–1883; Hartford, Connecticut, and Elmira, New York
Date of first publication · 1884
Publisher · Charles L. Webster & Co.
Important Quotes
“But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally
she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before”.
“I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and
buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good
when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . .
.We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up
and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on
a raft”.
References
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/huckfinn/
www.amazon.com
http://www.bookrags.com
Allison L. Maretic