The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

By Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which takes place along the Mississippi River
sometime in the 1830s or 1840s, begins with two brief statements to the reader that
appear before Chapter 1; both of these display Twain's trademark sense of humor. In
the first, under the heading “Notice,” Twain warns readers against attempting to find any
sort of deep meaning in the book. He lists different punishments for readers who seek
motive, moral, or plot within the narrative. The second, called “Explanatory,” assures
readers that the dialects used by different characters in the book are based on real
regional dialects, and have been researched thoroughly. As Twain notes, “I make this
explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these
characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.”
Chapters 1–3

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is written as a first-person narrative from the point
of view of the title character, Huckleberry (or Huck) Finn. Huck addresses the reader
directly throughout the work, and occasionally refers to events that occurred in one of
Twain's previous works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, in which Huck was a
supporting character. Of the previous book, Huck notes, “That book was made by Mr.
Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
Huck picks up his story where it left off in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: he and Tom,
two boys who live on the Mississippi River in the Missouri town of St. Petersburg, found
a large amount of gold left by robbers in a cave. The money—amounting to six
thousand dollars each—has been put in the care of Judge Thatcher, who gives the boys
interest earnings in the amount of one dollar each day. Huck has been unofficially
adopted by the Widow Douglas (to the apparent dismay of her sister Miss Watson), who
hopes to transform the rough-edged boy into a forthright young man. For Huck, such a
life is too restrictive; as he puts it, “All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was
a change.”
One night Tom Sawyer shows up to take Huck to a secret meeting with some other
boys; as they sneak away from the house, one of Miss Watson's slaves—Jim—hears
the boys, who carefully evade him. Tom takes the group of boys to a cave along the
river. He plans to start a gang of highway robbers to terrorize the local roadways, killing
and ransoming the men travelers and kidnapping the women—who, according to the
plan, would eventually fall in love with them. The group discusses the logistics of such
an operation, including what a “ransom” is and what happens when the robbers' cave
becomes overfilled with kidnapped women and men waiting to be ransomed. Soon
enough, Huck realizes that Tom's gang of robbers is only meant to engage in pretend
robberies; this disappoints him, though he still plays along. Tom also tells Huck how to
summon a genie from a tin lamp; Huck later tries this without success, and decides “all
that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies.”
Chapters 4–6

Over the next several months, Huck becomes accustomed to his life with Widow
Douglas and Miss Watson. He even starts growing fond of school. One morning, Huck
finds tracks in the snow outside the widow's house; he is certain they belong to his
father, called Pap, an abusive drunk whom Huck has not seen for over a year. Huck
immediately visits Judge Thatcher and gives up his fortune to keep his father from
getting hold of it, selling it to the judge for a single dollar.
Huck returns to his room one night to find Pap waiting for him. Pap threatens to beat
Huck if he continues going to school. Pap tells him, “You've put on considerable many
frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you.” Then Pap
takes Huck's only dollar to buy whisky.
Pap visits Judge Thatcher in an attempt to get at Huck's money. Thatcher and Widow
Douglas try to secure legal guardianship of Huck, but the judge who hears the case is
not willing to “interfere” and officially break up Huck's “family.” Later, the same judge
takes Pap into his home in an attempt to help him straighten his life out. Pap promises
to reform, but he continues to drink and gets kicked out of the judge's house.
Pap persists in his legal fight for Huck's money, and occasionally beats his son for
continuing to attend school. As Huck states, “I didn't want to go to school much, before,
but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap.” Eventually, Pap snatches Huck and takes him to
a secluded log cabin on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, where he keeps the
boy against his will. Kept away from the widow, Huck soon returns to his comfortable
old ways, wearing rags for clothes, smoking, and swearing. Pap beats him regularly,
however, and Huck waits for a chance to escape.
Chapters 7–9

One morning, while checking some fishing lines, Huck spots an empty canoe drifting
down the river. He hides the canoe to help when he makes his escape. Later that day,
Pap leaves for town, and Huck sees his chance. He stages the cabin so it appears that
someone has broken in and killed him, and that his body is somewhere in the river.
This, he believes, will keep Pap and Widow Douglas from trying to track him down. He
takes the canoe, stocked with some food and tools, to a heavily wooded island in the
middle of the river called Jackson's Island.
The next morning, Huck wakes to the sound of cannon fire; he sees smoke near the
ferryboat upriver, and figures out what is happening. “You see, they was firing cannon
over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top.” The ferry draws closer to
the island, and Huck sees many people he knows aboard it, including Pap, Judge
Thatcher, and Tom Sawyer. Once the ferry departs, Huck knows they will not return.
After a few days of camping and fishing, Huck finds evidence of others nearby. He
leaves for a different part of the island, and is surprised when he sees Miss Watson's
slave Jim camped alone in the woods. Huck approaches, but Jim—thinking Huck has
died—is terrified by what he assumes to be Huck's ghost. Huck explains how he
escaped from Pap's cabin, and asks why Jim is out in the woods. Jim tells Huck that he
ran off when he heard Miss Watson was planning to sell him to a slave trader from New
Orleans. Huck promises not to tell Jim's secret to anybody.
Huck and Jim find a large cavern in the center of the island, and decide it would make a
suitable camp protected from the elements. One night, they see a frame house drifting
down along the river; they row the canoe out to it and climb inside, where they find a
dead man who has been shot in the back. Jim covers the dead man's face and tells
Huck not to look at it. The two also find some supplies in the house, including some
knives, candles, and a hatchet, which they gather up and take with them.
Chapters 10–12

One evening, Huck finds a rattlesnake in the cave and kills it; as a prank, he leaves it in
Jim's bed to find later that night. When Jim gets in bed, however, he finds not just the
dead rattlesnake but also its live mate, which bites him. It takes four days for Jim to
recover.
Huck, feeling anxious for excitement, decides to put on a dress and bonnet—found
when they scavenged the drifting house—and go ashore, pretending to be a girl. He
comes upon a shanty occupied by a woman he has never seen before, and knocks on
the door.
Pretending to be a girl named Sarah Williams, Huck listens as the woman tells him
about the latest news in town: Huck Finn has been killed, and Miss Watson's slave Jim
is the main suspect since he disappeared the very night after Huck did. A three-
hundred-dollar reward has been offered for the apprehension of Jim, and the woman's
husband is part of a group of men preparing to search Jackson Island for the fugitive
slave. During the course of the conversation, the woman realizes that “Sarah” is actually
a boy, and confronts him. Huck invents a new lie, calling himself George Peters, and
manages to earn the woman's sympathy as well as a snack for the road. Huck hurries
back to the island and warns Jim about the coming search party.
Huck and Jim set off from the island and continue down the Mississippi River, passing
St. Louis and other towns along the way. One stormy night, they spot a steamboat
wrecked on some rocks. Huck convinces Jim to board it and see if they can find
anything worth taking. Once on board, Huck clandestinely discovers three criminals are
already on the wreck; two of them have the third tied up, with the intention of leaving
him to die. Huck tells Jim they should set the criminals' boat adrift and escape
themselves, but Jim informs him that their own raft has broken loose and drifted away.
Chapters 13–15

Huck and Jim search the perimeter of the wrecked steamer in search of the criminals'
boat. They find it, and as soon as the opportunity presents itself they hop in and cut it
loose. Afterward, Huck feels bad about leaving the criminals aboard the sinking wreck;
not wanting to be responsible for anyone's death, even thieves and murderers, he
decides to stop downriver and let someone know there are people trapped aboard the
wrecked steamer. Huck and Jim catch up to their raft and reclaim it. Soon after, Huck
spots a ferryboat and approaches the captain with a tale about a horse-ferry getting
snagged on the wrecked steamboat. He tells the captain that his family is stuck on the
sinking wreck. As the ferryboat heads off to help, Huck feels proud of this good deed:
I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping
these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and
good people takes the most interest in.
Soon after, Huck sees the wreck of the steamer floating downstream, with no sign of
survivors. He feels bad for the gang of criminals, but quickly recovers. He and Jim sort
through the plunder the criminals had stashed in their boat, finding cigars, books,
blankets, and clothes, among other things. As they smoke the cigars, the two discuss
the lives of kings, particularly King Solomon and the “dolphin” (Dauphin, the heir to the
French throne), a boy who had been destined to become the king of France but either
died or went into hiding after the French Revolution to avoid execution.
Huck and Jim continue down the river, trying to reach a town called Cairo, where the
Ohio River flows into the Mississippi; there, they hope to proceed up the Ohio River on
a steamboat to reach one of the “free states” where Jim would no longer be considered
a slave. They get stuck in a fog bank and become separated, with Jim on the raft and
Huck in a canoe. When Huck finally catches up with Jim—who has fallen asleep—he
wakes Jim and plays a prank on him, convincing Jim that he must have dreamed up the
whole separation. When Huck reveals his prank, Jim, who had been overjoyed to see
Huck again, gets upset; he had considered Huck his friend and had been worried about
him, but Huck's only interest was in making Jim look like a fool. After thinking it over,
Huck apologizes to Jim.
Chapters 16–18

As they continue on their search for Cairo, Huck begins to question the morality of his
own actions. He is, after all, helping a slave escape his owner—an action Huck sees as
a betrayal to the owner. Still, when a group of men approaches Huck looking for
runaway slaves, Huck protects Jim by keeping the men away from the raft; he hints to
the men that his father is on the raft, and that he has smallpox.
Huck and Jim soon realize that they have drifted far south of Cairo and the Ohio River.
Since taking the raft against the current is impossible, they devise a plan to canoe back
upriver during the night in search of Cairo; however, they find their canoe has
disappeared. As they drift downriver looking for someone willing to sell them a canoe,
their raft is struck by a steamboat headed upriver; the two are separated, and Huck
struggles to shore.
Huck falls into the company of the Grangerford family, who take him in (Huck tells them
his name is George Jackson). Huck soon discovers that the Grangerfords are in the
midst of a feud with another local family, the Shepherdsons. Huck also discovers—
through the family's slaves—that Jim is alive and well, and that their old raft is still
seaworthy. Before Huck can leave the Grangerfords, though, the feud between the
families explodes: daughter Sophia Grangerford runs away with Harney Sheperdson to
get married, and neither family approves. This culminates in a gunfight between the two
families, and Buck Grangerford—youngest of the clan, and Huck's closest friend in the
family—is killed. Huck escapes the trouble, finds Jim, and they continue down the river.
Chapters 19–21

As Huck searches for berries near the shore one day, two men run toward him and beg
Huck to help them reach safety, saying a search party of men and dogs is after them.
Huck takes the two back to the raft, where they reveal their stories: the two are con
men, each running a different racket, who happened across each other during their
separate escapes from angry townspeople. The two men try to outdo each other with
their stories. The younger man claims to be the rightful Duke of Bridgewater, while the
older claims to be none other than the now-elderly Dauphin, the rightful heir to the
throne of France. Each of the men asks for special, “royal” treatment from the other, and
Huck and Jim end up acting as servants for both. Huck eventually admits to the reader
that he knows the men are not really royalty (though he refers to them as “the duke” and
“the king” throughout the rest of the book), but he plays along just to keep things
peaceful.
Huck tells the two inquisitive con men that Jim is his family's slave, and that he and Jim
are on their way to live with Huck's uncle south of New Orleans. The group reaches a
small town, and finds the entire population away at a prayer meeting; the duke helps
himself to the local printing office, earning some cash and printing flyers that advertise
Jim as a runaway slave from a plantation near New Orleans. By showing the flyer, the
group is free to travel the river during the day as well as night; if anyone inquires about
Jim, they can say he is a runaway slave who has already been caught.
Chapters 22–24

The duke and the king continue to ply their trade as they move along the river, posing
as distinguished actors and swindling locals out of the admission to their show; they
always manage to stay one step ahead of the angry townspeople. Then the con men
hear of an inheritance yet to be claimed by a local dead man's distant brothers, and
decide to pose as the two brothers so they can get the inheritance.
The men show up at the village posing as Harvey and William Wilks, brothers to Peter
Wilks, who is deceased. Harvey, played by the king, affects an English accent, while
William—played by the duke—pretends to be a deaf-mute. Huck acts as their servant,
while Jim stays at the raft.
Chapters 25–27

The two “Wilks brothers” are welcomed by the townspeople, including Peter Wilks's
three nieces, Mary Jane, Susan, and Joanna. Mary Jane gives the king a letter
revealing the location of Peter's hidden fortune, which amounts to nearly six thousand
dollars that is to be left to the nieces. The girls entrust the fortune to their new uncles.
Huck, who has grown fond of the girls, decides he will not let the con men steal their
inheritance, and steals it back from the duke and the king. He is almost caught, and in a
panic he drops the money into the deceased Peter's coffin.
The con men auction off the Wilks family's slaves, and then discover that the inheritance
money is missing. Huck shrewdly suggests that the slaves stole the money, and were
now beyond the reach of the con men. The duke and the king believe him.
Chapters 28–30

As the con men prepare to auction off the rest of Peter Wilks's property for cash, Huck
realizes—much to his consternation—that the only way to help the girls is to tell Mary
Jane the truth, even though telling the truth seems to him “so kind of strange and
unregular.” He tells her everything, including where he left the money.
Just as the duke and the king finish selling off the Wilks estate, two men arrive in town
claiming to be the real Harvey and William Wilks. Unsure whom to believe, the
townspeople grab Huck and the con men until the matter is sorted out. Peter's coffin is
exhumed—part of a test to determine which set of Wilks brothers can identify a tattoo
on Peter's chest—and the townspeople discover the money inside the coffin. In the
excitement, Huck escapes from the crowd and makes his way back to the raft. As he
and Jim start off down the river, the duke and king catch up and board the raft.
Chapters 31–33

The king and the duke, desperate for money, spend their time huddled in secret
conversations. Meanwhile, Huck and Jim plan to leave the two con men behind as soon
as the opportunity arises. At one stop, Huck slips free of the king and the duke in a town
and runs back to the raft, hoping to escape with Jim. When he arrives, Jim is nowhere
to be found. He discovers that the king and the duke have sold Jim off to locals as a
runaway slave; by presenting the fake flyer the duke had printed—the one offering a
two-hundred-dollar reward for Jim—they sell their “rights” to Jim for forty dollars in cash.
In this way, the duke and the king manage to swindle the locals and betray Huck and
Jim.
Huck debates what he should do; he knows that “the right thing and the clean thing” is
to write a letter to Miss Watson, telling her the location of her runaway slave. However,
when he thinks of what a great friend Jim has been, he decides to follow the path of
“wickedness” and help Jim escape. As Huck surveys the Phelps farm, where Jim is
being held, he is spotted by one of the family's slaves and is mistaken for a visiting
nephew. Huck plays along, and soon discovers that the “nephew” he is impersonating is
none other than Tom Sawyer. Tom's Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas welcome the boy into
their home as their nephew.
Huck manages to intercept the real Tom Sawyer before he reaches the Phelps farm,
and after convincing Tom that he is not a ghost, explains the whole situation to him.
Tom is thrilled at the prospect of adventure; not only does Tom pretend to be Sid
Sawyer (since the Phelpses have already met “Tom”), but he also agrees to help Huck
free Jim.
Chapters 34–39

Tom and Huck come up with plans to set Jim free. Huck's plan is straightforward and
simple, which is why Tom objects: “What's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble
than that? It's as mild as goose-milk.” Instead, Tom devises an elaborate plan
reminiscent of a classic adventure novel, deliberately avoiding any easy or obvious
solutions. For example, instead of lifting up the leg of the bed to slip Jim's chain off, Tom
insists they saw through the leg of the bed—and that only after Huck convinces him that
sawing through Jim's leg is not a viable option. Instead of using the door to escape
Jim's cabin prison, Tom decides they will tunnel their way out.
Tom and Huck fill Jim's cabin with snakes, rats, and spiders to make his prison more
dire, and continue working on equally absurd things like a rope-ladder that will never be
used and a “warning letter” to tell Uncle Silas of impending trouble. Aunt Sally notices
that items such as shirts and spoons are disappearing from the household, but does not
suspect that Tom and Huck are using them for any big escapade.
Chapter 40–42

On the night of the escape, Uncle Silas brings additional men to guard Jim's cabin, but
Jim and the boys slip out through the tunnel and head for the woods. They are spotted,
and some of the men open fire. Although they escape, Tom is shot in the calf and needs
a doctor. Instead of running away to safety, Jim insists on staying with Tom while Huck
gets a doctor. However, Huck gets trapped back at the Phelpses' before the doctor
returns. Eventually the doctor, Tom—still ill from his wound—and Jim all show up at the
farm. The doctor tells everyone that Jim “ain't a bad n-----,” and that he helped the
doctor treat Tom's wound even though he knew staying would cost him his freedom.
When Tom recovers the next morning, he tells Aunt Sally all about their plan to free Jim
—not knowing that Jim has been recaptured. Tom objects, and reveals that Miss
Watson, Jim's former owner, died two months before; in her will, she stipulated that Jim
be set free. When asked why he would go through so much trouble to set a free man
free, Tom says he “wanted the adventure of it.” At that moment, Tom's Aunt Polly
appears at the Phelps farm and reveals the true identities of “Sid” and “Tom.” She also
confirms that Jim is a free man.
Huck makes two important discoveries. Tom tells him that Judge Thatcher is still holding
Huck's money for him, all six thousand dollars and more. Then Jim confesses to Huck
that the dead man he saw in the frame house floating down the river, so many weeks
before, was actually Huck's father.
Tom suggests that he, Huck, and Jim head for the Indian Territories to have some
adventures. Huck ends his story, saying:
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.