Key Points from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary Key Points:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins when Huckleberry Finn is kidnapped by his abusive father. He fakes his death and escapes. Huck runs into escaped slave Jim.
Instead of turning him in, Huck travels with Jim down the Mississippi, where they narrowly escape the Grangerford/Shepherdson feud.
Huck and Jim pick up two conmen pretending to be European royalty. When the frauds try to con three newly orphaned sisters, Huck exposes them.
The King and the Duke return and turn Jim in. Huck goes to the Phelps’s farm where Jim is imprisoned and pretends to be their awaited nephew, Tom Sawyer.
Tom arrives and helps Huck rescue Jim. When the attempt fails, Tom reveals Jim’s owner died and freed Jim. Huck prepares to begin his wandering again.
As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill on the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake. Afterwards, Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it, he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it, he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other people. People would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any person in that country. Strange people would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. People are always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know ’bout witches?” and that person was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-cent piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil gave to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. People would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-cent piece; but they wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
Summary
Huck, bored and lonely at the widow’s home, takes off in the night with Tom Sawyer, looking for some adventures. They come across Jim, Miss Watson’s slave, asleep under a tree. Knowing how superstitious Jim is, Tom decides to play a prank on the slave. He removes his hat and hangs it on a nearby tree. When Jim wakes up and sees his hat, he is convinced that it was witches who put it there. In the future, he makes up a wild tale in which he was transported all across the state in a trance and then returned to the tree where the witches hung up his hat. He later elaborates it further, stating that he was carried down to New Orleans, and then even further until at last his account includes a trip clear around the world. His supposed encounter with witches then gives Jim a new sense of importance around the slave community, which he relishes. Huck proclaims that Jim was almost ruined as a servant because he became so proud of having seen the devil and ridden with witches. Jim’s gullibility and superstitious nature thus are set up for further development in the rest of the story.Essential Passage 2: Chapter 15
It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again now.
“Oh, well, that’s all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I says; “but what does these things stand for?”
It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could see them first-rate now.
Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn’t seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around, he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:
“What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back ag’in, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I could ‘a’ got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ’bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ’em ashamed.”
Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kiss his foot to get him to take it back.
It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a person; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterward, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d ‘a’ knowed it would make him feel that way.
Summary
Huck and Jim are traveling down the Mississippi, intending to reach Cairo, Illinois, and then head up the Ohio River to the northern states and freedom. However, a dense fog arises, and Jim and the raft drift from the bank, stranding Huck on shore. When the fog clears, Huck finds the raft and quietly sneaks on board, surprising Jim. Huck, however, still taking advantage of Jim’s gullibility, convinces him that he had been on the raft the whole time….