The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I. Discover Moses and the Bulrushers (pg 1)

Huckleberry Finn is kept by a widow who provides for his schooling and life necessities
but he hates being mannered and wants to runaway all the time. The widow’s sister – “a
tolerable slim old maid” – teachers him the Bible and Huck soon finds it pointless to learn about
“dead people” but would only stand all these miseries because he wants to join Tom Sawyer’s
gang in the robbing business (2).
II. Our Gang’s Dark Oath (pg 4)
Tom Sawyer calls Huckleberry Finn out and they are almost caught by the slave Jim, who
is famous “because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by
witches” (6). Soon, Tom and Huck escapes and goes onto forming Tom Sawyer’s Gang where
everyone takes an oath to swear their loyalty and decided the purpose of the disunited gang.
When it comes to killing one’s family member, Huck offers the life of Miss Watson and the gang
accepts.
III. We Ambuscade the Arabs (pg 10)
For weeks, Tom Sawyer’s Gang “hadn’t robbed nobody, hadn’t killed any people, but only just
pretended,” so one day Tom tells the gang about the rich Arabs and Spanish merchants with
elephants and diamonds that they will rob on Sunday (12). They end up chasing children up the
hollow because Tom says it was all done by enchantment “where their magician enemies turned
the whole thing into an infant Sunday school” (13).
IV. The Hairball Oracle (pg 15)
Huck gave Jim “an old slick counterfeit quarter” in exchange for his fortune to be told by Jim’s
fist-sized hairball, which predicted that Huck’s father will be back and he also warns Huck to
keep away from water as well as any risks that can cause him to be hung (17).
V. Pap starts in on a New Life (pg 18)
Huck’s father returns and criticizes Huck for his education because “None of the family couldn’t
[be educated] before they died,” but he returns with the sole purpose of the six-thousand dollars
of Huck’s that has been the hot topic around town. The new judge refuses to interfere with
family problems so Huck’s money-hungry drunken father can take Huck away from the widow
legally and start a new life.

VI. Pap Struggles with the Death Angel (pg 23)

Huck quickly gets used to Pap’s way of life and no schooling, except for the fact that sometimes
Huck is locked in a cabin and never allowed out. Just as Huck found a saw and decides to
escape by cutting the cabin apart, his father returns so Huck had to wait until his father becomes
drunk to escape but Pap wakes up screaming, asking the dead to leave him alone and chases after
Huck with a knife because he was the Angel of Death.
VII. I fool Pap and Get Away (pg 30)
Huck finds a canoe when he is suppose to be out checking the end of the fish-lines for dinner, so
he devises a plan to escape to Jackson’s Island with others thinking that he is murdered.
VIII. I Spare Miss Watson’s Jim (pg 36)
After Huck’s escape, people who knew Huck set out to search for Huck’s corpse but are
unsuccessful. Huck manages to live on the island but felt lovely and scared all the time so he
decides he needs a friend thus accidentally finds the runaway slave Jim at the Illinois shore.
IX. The House of Death Floats By (pg 47)
Young birds “flying a yard or two at a time and lighting” is a sign of rain later on, according to
Jim’s conversation with Huck (45). The three or four foot deep flood sends houses afloat so
Huck and Jim dig through them for supplies and one night, they found a dead man in the house
and takes everything worthy from the house, paying no attention to the corpse.
X. What Comes of Handling Snake-skin (pg 52)
Jim told Huck that touching snake skin causes bad luck and Huck decides to trick Jim with a
dead rattlesnake but ends up causing Jim a snake bite that takes “four days and nights” to heal.
As the story goes on, Jim has repeatedly proved himself to be correct in Huck’s eyes, even
thought Huck refuses to acknowledge it.
XI. They’re After Us! (pg 52)
Huck disguises himself as a girl to “slip over the river and find out what was going on” and he
went to a lady who immediately found out that Huck was a boy (54). She tells Huck rumor has it
that Jim has killed Huck and there is a three-hundred-dollar reward up for capturing Jim.
XII. “Better Let Blame Well Alone” (pg 63)
Even though Jim is reluctant because he believes in “better let blame’ well alone,” he follows
Huck to “borrow” from a wrecked ship again. They overhear a murder to be done due to gang
problems and after they board the ship, which is to be sunk in two hours, their raft loosens and
drifts away. (66)
XIII. Honest Loot from the “Walter Scott” (pg 70)
Huck and Jim took the gangster’s boat loaded with stolen properties and went off but Huck—
realizing that what he does is just like the gangster’s “indirect” murders – has turned to the
watchman and lied about the niece of Jim Hornback is on the ship so he would set out to save the
survivors. Then, Huck and Jim went back to the island, “hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and
turned in and slept like dead people” (75).
XIV. Was Solomon Wise? (pg76)
Jim and Huck resorted to talking about Solomon’s “Harem boarding houses,” and Jim thinks
having see ladies argue all day is annoying and therefore man like Solomon “can’t ‘ford…to
value [children]” (78). Thus, Jim does not understand why all man cannot share just one
language.
XV. Fooling Poor Old Jim (pg 80)
Jim almost lost Huck when their raft and canoe go different ways but Huck eventually finds Jim,
who has been worried and sad all night. Huck decides to trick Jim and finds out that Jim is hurt
because he really cares for Huck’s well-being so Huck feels horrible afterward and “It was
fifteen minute before [Huck] could work [himself] up to go and humble [himself] to a nigger”
(86).
XVI. The Rattlesnake-Skin Does its Work (pg 86)
For the first time, Huck feels guilty because he is assisting Jim in escaping to freedom and he
wants to tell on Jim. When the chance comes, however, Huck decides on remaining loyal to his
moralities instead of the society’s belief and continues to move along the Mississippi with Jim
but their raft is unfortunately split into two by a big ship.
XVII. The Grangerfords Take Me In (pg 95)
Huck loses contact with Jim and ends up at the Grangerfords’ house, where they suspects Huck
to be their rival Shepherdsons but upon realization that Huck is “just a kid,” they offers for him
to stay and live there for as long as he wishes. Huck finds the Grangerford’s dead daughter
Emmeline to be extremely gifted in art and poetry so he feels sorry that she “made poetry about
all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn’t seem right that there wasn’t nobody to make
some about her now she was gone” (104).
XVIII. Why Harney Rode Away for His Hat (pg 104)
Buck Grangerford tells Huck about the feud between them and the Shepherdsons after Harney
Shepherdson attempts but fails to kill Buck because he had to go back to pick up his hat, but
Huck does not understand why people kill others that has never done anything to them.
Eventually, Sophia Grangerford runs away for love with Harvey Shepherdson, which explains
why Harvey does not bother killing Buck, and the Shepherdson plans an ambush and kills the
entire Grangerford family. Huck and Jim moves on.
XIX. The Duke and the Dauphin Came Aboard (pg 117)
As Huck and Jim sails along, two men in trouble ran to them for help and came aboard. One
claims that he is a duke whereas the other later claims himself to be the king. Both Huck and
Jim serves them with courtesy to avoid trouble and to keep peace between everyone on the raft.
XX. What Royalty Did to Parksville (pg 126)
The Duke and Dauphin acquires followers to hear them preach and collect a total of nine dollar
and a half from the people as advertisement fees. They print an extra advertisement according to
their “plan” to sell Jim as a runaway slave who is going up north with a two-hundred-dollar
reward if returned to the South, thus they will tie Jim up in robes so they can escape in daytime
as if they captured the slave.
XXI. An Arkansas Difficulty (pg135)
After numerous practices on the raft, the Duke decides that the performance is to be done at a
one-horse town in Arkansas, where they pass around flyers. The night of the performance is
more exciting than usual because an annoying drunk man named Boggs is shot by Colonel
Sherburn, whom the townspeople now demands to be lynched.
XXII. Why the Lynching Bee Failed (pg145)
After watching the circus animals’ performance, only twelve people comes to the Duke and
Dauphin’s show, “just enough to pay the expenses” (150). The outraged Duke swears that
Arkansas people only like low comedy so he creates a new flyer that excludes ladies and children
admissions but increases the general admission to fifty cents.
XXIII. The Orneriness of Kings (pg151)
The second production lasts three days and earns them a total of four hundred and sixty five
dollars (It was a great “rip-off” but the townspeople that attended do not want to become the
“laughing stock of this whole town” so they “talk [the] show up, and sell the rest of the town”)
(152). Jim despises the way “the Royalties” deceives people and he is reminded of himself
mistreating his “deef and dumb” daughter (156).
XXIV. The King Turns Parson (pg 157)
The Duke makes up a plan and dresses everyone in costumes, paints Jim in a dull blue and labels
him “Sick Arab – BUT HARMLESSS WHEN NOT OUT OF HIS HEAD.” They make their trip
again and come across “a nice innocent-looking young country jake,” whom they have a
thorough conversation about the rich man Mr. Wilks with.
XXV. All Full of Tears and Flapdoodle (pg 163)
The King and Duke go on and pretend to be William and Harvey Wilks, fooling the entire town
and the people with thr information they have gathered beforehand. When Peter Wilks’ friend
Doctor Robinson returns and accuses Harvey of being a fraud, Mary-Jane angrily “hove up the
bag of money and put it in the king’s hands, and says ‘Take this six thousand dollars, and invest
for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don’t give us no receipt for it’” (170).
XXVI. I Steal the King’s Plunder (Pg 171)
The Duke wants to quit this business with the six thousand dollars already but the King wants to
sell the estate and everything first, because “the people that buys the property is the suffr’ers,”
therefore the Duke also agrees to “finishing the business” (177). Huck feels bad knowing all
these things and becomes determined to return the stolen money to its rightful owner.
XXVII. Dead Peter Has His Gold (pg 179)
Huck sneaks into the Kind’s room at night, steals the bag of gold, and places them inside Peter
Wilks’ coffin in a hurry so he will not be caught. He is not sure whether it is in the coffin
anymore the next morning when the coffin was screwed together but is reassured when the Duke
and the King questions him about people who enters his room.
XXVIII. Overreaching Don’t Pay (pg 186)
Huck cannot stand the frauds anymore when he sees Mary-Jane crying over the slaves sold and
have their families separated, so he tells Mary-Jane the truth about the frauds and devises a plan
to jail the king and his duke, which Huck feels proud of because even “Tom Sawyer couldn’t ’a’
done it no neater himself” (195).
XXIX. I Light Out in the Storm (pg195)
The day Mary-Jane went to town was the same day that the real Harvey and William return. The
townspeople along with Dr. Robinson and lawyer Levi Bell inspects the frauds and almost
immediately reveals their fraud identities.
XXX. The Gold Saves the Thieves (pg 205)
The King says that there is a blue cross on the dead man’s chest whereas Harvey Wilks says that
there are the words “P-B-W” so everyone goes along and brings the coffin up to inspect the
corpse and finds the gold that Huck has hidden (202). That spares the King and Duke’s lives as
well as Huck’s own and nobody guess that Huck is ever suspicious yet.
XXXI. You Can’t Pray a Lie (pg 209)
The King and Duke become desperate after fruitless attempts to earn a living so they sold Jim for
forty dollars. The Duke then tells Huck that Jim is at a house “forty miles back here in the
country, on the road to Lafayette,” but Huck knows well that Jim is at Silas Phelps’s estate.
XXXII. I Have a New Name (Pg 218)
Huck devises a plan to sneak into the Phelps’s estate, where he finds out that Phelps was Tom
Sawyer’s uncle and is able to tell the Phelps everything they want to know about the Sawyer’s
life.
XXXIII. The Pitiful Ending of Royalty (pg 224)
Huck told Tom everything about his adventures and Tom agrees to help Huck steal Jim out of
slavery, thus pretends to be Sid Sawyer. They discover “‘the runaway nigger told Burton…all
about that scandalous show [Royal Nonesuch]’ ” and set out to save the King and Duke but they
were too late (230). Huck realizes that “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another” (231).
XXXIV. We Cheer Up Jim (pg 232)
After Tom observes the house for a while, he was sure that Jim is hidden in a hut as prisoner and
was determined to save Jim with the most time-costing and adventurous method. The slave who
watches over Jim shows Tom and Huck where Jim is and tells them about the witches bothering
him.
XXXV. Dark, Deep-Laid Plans (pg 238)
Tom gains power from criticizing Huck and his “starting something fresh all the time” so Huck
would do crazy and adventurous things with him because “that’s regular” (240). Huck always
gives into Tom’s ideas and falls into believing that Tom is more superior and brave because he
makes things that are so simple into complicated complexes.
XXXVI. Trying to Help Jim (pg 245)
Huck tells Jim their plan of giving Jim a ladder and putting “things in uncle’s coat pockets and
[Jim] must steal them out” but Jim does not see why they must go through all these trouble; even
so, he follows the directions as they are given. Then, Tom tricks the slave watchman Nat into
believing that there are witches again and therefore Tom will make a witch pie that Nat must not
look at or touch at all.
XXXVII. Jim Gets His Witch Pie (pg 251)
It took Tom and Huck nine months to shred the bed sheets into rope ladder materials, which ends
up filling fourteen pie pans instead of one, so they throw out the leftovers and add other necessity
into the pan. Jim use the items according to the directions after he receives it.
XXXVIII. “Here a Captive Heart Busted” (pg 258)
Tom makes up mournful inscriptions for Jim to inscribe with nails onto the logs, which Jim
claims would take at least a year. Jim decides not to behave anymore upon the endless
arguments that Tom start about what a prisoner should do: tame a rattlesnake, raise a spider,
grow flowers with his tears…etc.
XXXIX. Tom Writes Nonnamous Letters (pg 265)
Tom thinks it is his “duty” to write anonymous letters as clues to foreshadow Jim’s escape, so he
writes a letter for Aunt Sally and one for the back door guards.
XL. A Mixed-up and Splendid Rescue (pg 270)
After reading Tom’s letters, the alerted farmers gather with guns to shoot the slave-rescuers.
Tom, Huck, and Jim barely escape and Tom is shot at the calf. Jim, under his conscience, cannot
leave Tom alone at all, so Huck goes to fetch a doctor as Jim stays with Tom.
XLI. “Must ’a’ Been Sperits” (pg 277)
When the Phelps discover all the inscriptions, rag ladder, and grindstone, they believed that it
was done by spirits because it looks like years of work. Tom never returns after the night he
becomes injured so Aunt Sally feels extremely worried and Huck feels horrible.
XLII. Why They Didn’t Hang Jim (pg284)
Later, the doctor returns with “Sid” (Tom Sawyer) and Jim, and people demands Jim to be hung
so the doctor defends Jim because he is “no bad nigger” (286). Later, Tom reveals that “Old
Miss Watson died two months ago, and…she set [Jim] free in her will,” thus Aunt Polly comes
and exposes Tom and Huck’s real identities (290).
Chapter the Last. Nothing More to Write (pg 292)
Tom gives Jim forty dollars to compensate for his lost time whereas Aunt Polly, Uncle Silas, and
Aunt Sally offer Jim every food that he wants so Jim has “ben rich wunst, en gwineter be rich
ag’in” (293). Huck finds out that his father is the dead man in the house afloat that they
“borrowed” from, so the six-thousand dollars that Huck keeps at Judge Thatcher’s place is
legally Huck’s only money now. Moreover, Aunt Sally decides to adopt and civilize Huck.
Quotes
“Yes, en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht
I had de money, I wouldn’t want no mo’-” by Jim (47)
“Mornings before daylight I slipped…no decent body would do it” (65)
“I was just abiling with curiousity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn’t back out now,
and so I won’t either; I’m a-going to see what’s going on here” (67-68)
“Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger”
(76)
“She was a big one, and she was coming…she come smashing straight through the raft” (94)
“We said there wasn’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” (116)
“If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with this kind of
people is to let them have their own way” (125)
“Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of
the human race” (163)
“‘Don’t ever tell me anymore that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they
played that thing it would fool anybody’” (185)
“It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience does I would
pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good,
nohow Tom Sawyer he says the same” (231)
“‘It shows how a body can see and don’t see at the same time.’” By Huck Finn (232)
“‘Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,’ I says, ‘there’s an old rusty saw blade
around younger stricking under the weather, boarding behind the smokehouse.’” (245)
“So then we lard in with Jim the second night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings and
twisted them together, and long before daylight we had a lovely robe that you could ’a’ hung a
person with.” (256)
“Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way for a reason” (266)
“Tom is almost killed, yet learns nothing from experience. But Huck’s loss seems the greatest of
all. After finally letting his heart overcome all of the prejudices and moral inhibitions that
society has put into his head, having determined to defy society to ‘go whole hog’ to rescue his
friend Jim, he meets Tom Sawyer and immediately crawls back under Tom’s Romantic Wing.
Huck’s character and moral nature seem violated” (295)