Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Reading Schedule:
1. Week of October 7-11: Chapters 1-9
2. Week 2 October 15-18: Chapters 10-16
3. Week 3 October 21-25: Chapters 17-21
4. Week 4 October 28-Nov. 1: Chapters 22-28
5. Week 5 November 4-8: Chapters 29-34
6. Week 6 November 11-15: Chapters 34-END
Themes and Study Guide Questions: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
from A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Coming of Age: Huck’s Search for Identity
This theme focuses on the transition of the adolescent from carefree childhood to
responsible adulthood. Generally, because young adults’ search for identity can lead to
isolation, confusion, and rebellion, this theme emphasizes psychological growth or
maturity. While adolescents may seek independence and freedom to explore the unknown
world around them, they are simultaneously dependent on adults in their lives for
security, for economic and emotional support. Adolescents seek peer support as they
struggle for independence, the freedom to discover themselves and their capabilities.
Social Responsibility; Conformity and Civilization
These two themes, though distinct, engage Huck Finn from the outset when the Widow
Douglas and Miss Watson seek to guide Huck’s development as a proper citizen with
schooling, wholesome living, and religion, all of which Pap counters by teaching
ignorance, abuse of self and others, and instinctive but uncivilized behaviors. Tom sawyer
tries to teach Huck how to live based upon his own readings of Romance fiction, lessons
largely lost on practical-minded Huck. Interestingly, Huck learns about social
responsibility, when and how to conform, and a truer meaning of being civilized from
Jim, a runaway slave, and from negative examples of those who hurt others.
Friendship and Betrayal
Without an initial act of friendship or promise, betrayal would be non-existent. After
all, how can one betray a person or society he has not acknowledged and cares nothing
about? The very act of betrayal suggests that in a world of friends and enemies, one
has delivered the former to the latter. While Huck is still learning to be a friend, he
plays pranks on Jim that are hurtful. Likewise, when Huck and Jim have helped the
King and Duke, the pair abuse and take advantage of them, ultimately selling Jim.
Freedom and Enslavement
Any work set in the American south in the 1830’s involving a runaway slave and a
white boy must perforce be about enslavement and freedom. Both Jim and Huck
define and redefine what it means to be free, even as they encounter scores of kinds
of slavery, from alcoholism and ignorance to racism and economic want. Ask
students to define freedom with examples of what each type of freedom will do in
their lives (for example, not depending on others for a ride=having one’s own car).
Discuss: Are there occasions when freedoms involve enslavements, (for example,
having one’s own car/freedom=paying for gas, insurance, tires and having to work
for those things)?
Chapters 1-5: Status Quo and Conformity: Civilizing Huck
These five chapters introduce Huck Finn and those who impact his life and seek to shape
him: Tom sawyer, Jim, Pap, Judge Thatcher, the Widow Douglas, and Miss Watson. The
main purpose of the first paragraph is to pick up where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer left
off, introducing the details that will impact this new improved Huck Finn: the $6000
treasure, his adoption by the Widow, and his preference for freedom, even at the cost of
respectability.
QUESTIONS
1. How and why does Twain establish Huck’s voice as storyteller? What do we learn
about Huck from what he reveals of other characters’ assessments of him?
2. Make two columns, listing Huck’s clear likes and dislikes as he reveals them in these
chapters. What things does he have trouble understanding?
3. What are Huck’s feelings about his adoption by the Widow Douglas and her sister,
Miss Watson? As a motherless boy, does he need their influence? 0 A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
4. Huck’s upbringing is at issue in the book. What has he been taught that forms his
core self? What do other characters want to teach him and how do they wish to
change him?
5. These chapters establish components of Huck’s self that others hope to influence:
his emotions, his intelligence, his fiscal responsibility, his spirituality, his social self,
and his physical health and habits. To what and whom does Huck conform and
when/how does he reject conformity in these chapters?
6. The titles of the chapters are in third person, while the text itself is in the first person
voice of Huck Finn. What does this literary device suggest about the argument that
Huck and Twain are one and the same?
QUOTATIONS TO CONSIDER
1. “Then she told me about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there…I couldn’t
see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t
try for it” (12-13).
2. “Why, blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to
go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?” (18).
3. “I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by
praying for it was ‘spiritual gifts.’ This was too many for me, but she told me…I
must help other people, and do everything for other people, and look out for them
all the time, and never think about myself…I went out in the woods and turned it
over in my mind a long time…” (20).
4. “Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I
didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and
could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time
when he was around” (21).
5. “I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit” (24).
6. “The judge…said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun,
maybe, but he didn’t know no other way” (31).
Chapters 6-11: Escape and the Wealth of Self
Huck differentiates himself from Pap by attending school to spite his father and revealing
how little money matters to him. Huck’s daily life and his relationship with Pap are
explored in these chapters when he is kidnapped and forced to endure Pap’s physical
abuse and world view, filled with prejudice, alcoholism, racism, violence, and antigovernment sentiment. While Huck feels comfortable with parts of this lifestyle, he
clearly rejects other facets and plans his escape—both from Pap and from other civilizers.
In planning and faking his own death, Huck remarks that Tom sawyer would have added
fancy touches to this plan, clear foreshadowing of Tom’s contributions to Jim’s rescue in
the final chapters of the book. Tom’s and Huck’s definitions of adventure are distinct
here, as Tom’s are book-inspired, elaborate and imaginative, and Huck’s are life-driven,
reflecting a real and frightening experience.
Huck’s finding Jim on Jackson’s Island and aligning himself with him, despite his revulsion
at being an abolitionist, begins the adventures in earnest. He immediately puts his imagination
and necessity to good use in stealing useful items from a floating house, dressing like a girl
and going ashore to learn if they (actually Jim) are being chased, and escaping before slave
catchers can arrive. Huck embraces his alliance with Jim when he says, “They’re after us!” We
learn that Huck has native intelligence and a gift for remembering what will help him survive.
He shows considerable descriptive powers as he describes a storm on the Mississippi, revealing
both his romantic grasp of nature and his preference for the life away from shore. His
curiosity as to the identity of the dead man in the house further underscores this event for
readers who will remember it in the final chapter when Jim tells Huck it was Pap.
Close reading can offer readers knowledge about the plight of other runaways in society.
Judith Loftus figures Huck for an apprentice who has run away from a cruel master, a
situation for which she clearly has sympathy.
QUESTIONS
1. What sort of person does Huck reveal his father to be? What is Huck’s relationship
with his father?
2. Why does Huck stage his own murder rather than simply running away? What
repercussions could this choice have on those who care about him?
3. What are Huck’s feelings about the river and living closely with nature?
4. Why does Huck tell Jim he won’t turn him in, when he is so frankly opposed to
abolition? What does this reveal about Huck’s character?
5. Huck and Jim are runaways seeking freedom. In two columns, list the reasons and
differences in their motivation to escape.
QUOTATIONS TO CONSIDER
1. “I didn’t want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I’d go now to spite pap” (31).
2. “Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about
to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there
was a state in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll
never vote ag’in” (35).
3. “I did wish Tom sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind
of business, and throw in the fancy touches” (41).
4. “[s]omebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done
it…there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it
don’t work for me and I reckon it don’t work for only just the right kind” (45).
5. “People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum—
but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t a-going to tell” (50).
- “I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars” (54).
Chapters 12-18: BondIng over Inhumanity
Huck and Jim’s adventures on the river are brought into contrast with those on land in
these chapters. On the river, they discover murderers on a sinking steamboat, are
separated in a rough current and fog, encounter slave hunters, miss their exit to Cairo
and freedom, and are run down by a riverboat. On land, they wash up separately, Huck
among the Grangerfords, Arkansas farmers who are feuding with a neighboring wealthy
family, the shepherdsons, and Jim in the swamp nearby, cared for by their slaves. The
prosperity, religiosity, and senseless hatred of the families make a profound impression on
Huck who unwittingly participates in Harney shepherdson’s elopement with sophia
Grangerford, igniting violence between the families. Huck is present as his friend Buck
is murdered, and reports that he dreams of this event (post traumatic stress disorder). In
searching for the raft, he finds Jim and the reunion attests to their friendship. The final
paragraph of Chapter 18 clarifies the differences in their relationship on the raft and on
the land. On the raft, they discuss solomon’s wisdom, harems, French language, and their
family memories. Huck suffers pangs of conscience in aiding a runaway and abuses Jim
saying, “[You] can’t learn a nigger to argue” (84); in fact, Jim has argued well and defeated
Huck. still they argue as near equals and friends, as fathers and sons perhaps, until they
arrive on land. Then Jim is relegated to life as a slave, and Huck fabricates his way into
the family life of plantation owners.
Within these chapters, Jim fathers Huck and they mutually take care of one another.
Their definitions of family are at odds with the feuding families’ views. Being “free and
safe,” having tasty food, talking and enjoying the company of another person, and being
far from the “cramped up and smothery” attitudes on land are the ingredients of home to Huck and Jim: “We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all…You feel mighty
free and easy and comfortable on a raft” (117). Ironically, Jim is less free daily, headed
south and farther from free states.
QUESTIONS
1. How does the episode with the murderers and the attempt to save them develop
Huck’s sense of morality? What is his current code? From whom or what has he
developed this code thus far?
2. What role does Huck play in discussions with Jim? What has Huck learned in
school, from reading, or from Tom sawyer that he has retained and found useful?
How and when does Huck compliment and denigrate Jim?
3. What lessons from Pap does Huck remember and evaluate during his moral
dilemmas with Jim?
4. How do both Grangerfords and shepherdsons exhibit religious hypocrisy? Explain
Twain’s use of the families’ feuding as satire of Civil War mentality.
5. The families follow their own code of behavior, unable to remember the original
court case and the reason for the feud. Discuss feuds and frontier justice as they
impact Huck’s growing sense of right and wrong.
6. Discuss Jim’s interactions with the Grangerford slaves, including his assessment of
their abilities. What do these slaves know about the underground railroad and ways
for runaways to elude capture?
QUOTATIONS TO CONSIDER
1. “Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them
back, sometime; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing,
and no decent body would do it” (70).
2. “Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men—I reckon I hadn’t had
time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in
such a fix. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer
myself yet, and then how would I like it?” (76).
3. “Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for
a nigger” (81).
“I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. so I quit” (84).
4. “’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” (89).
5. “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a
nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterward, neither” (89).
6. “…I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame
for it? Why, me…Conscience says to me, ‘What had poor Miss Watson done to you
that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single
word?” (91).
7. “I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done
wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t
get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show” (94).
8. “Well then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to
do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” (94).
9. “The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees
or stood them handy against the wall. The shepherdsons done the same. It was
pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but
everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had
such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace…” (111).
10. “I ain’t a-going to tell all that happened—it would make me sick again if I was to
do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain’t ever
going to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about them” (116).
Chapters 19-31: Lessons in Assistance and Betrayal
These chapters focus on the Duke and the King, two con-men who are rescued by Huck
and Jim and who present some of the most troubling episodes within the adventures.
Huck’s romantic description of their life on the raft is followed closely by the collision
with these runaway con-men who are being chased from the town for dental malpractice
and a temperance movement con, respectively. The pair immediately begins to con one
another and Jim and Huck by professing themselves a Duke of Bridgewater and the
rightful king of France (the “late Dauphin”). They convince Huck and Jim to treat them
as royals, in essence turning the two into their slaves and servants. While Huck’s behavior
toward them seems to convince Jim also, Huck is their willing servant for the sake of
peace and camaraderie: “…what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to
be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others” (125). Huck’s early life with Pap,
himself a fraud and lowlife, has taught Huck to recognize the type when he sees them but
also to let them have their way. He himself knows how to lie for protection; he tells these
thieves that Jim is his slave but his papers were lost in a family tragedy rafting south. For
this reason, they travel by night and sleep by day. The last paragraph of Chapter 19
explains a good deal about Huck’s world view and ideas of family. It is troubling and
worthy of discussion that for the remaining chapters given to travel with this pair of con
men, Huck does not tell Jim they are frauds, much the same as Jim does not tell Huck
that his father is dead.
Town after town, the Duke and King collaborate on performances, and hone their skills
of deceit among people who at their best attend tent meetings and circuses for amusement
and, at their worst, are entertained by cruelty, gang violence, and low humor. In one such
town, Huck witnesses Colonel sherburn’s murder of Boggs and the subsequent attempt
of the crowd to lynch him. sherburn’s commentary on mob justice, armies, Northerners
and southerners, and manhood makes an impression on Huck who is himself growing
to manhood. Ultimately, the King and Duke claim to be the brothers of Peter Wilks, so
that they can acquire his estate, a con that eats at Huck’s conscience. Wilks’ daughters
befriend Huck, and he becomes enamored of the oldest and tells her of the plot to con
her and where he has put the estate money held by the pair. He and Jim try to escape
from these rogues, but are not quick enough. The Duke and King’s final performance
gets them tarred and feathered, but not before the King sells Jim.
While Huck knows these two are con men, Jim also realizes that they are “rapscallions,”
and our heroes wish to escape from their enslavement. Mistreated by these men, they
comfort one another, coming to understand better the feelings and motivations of one
another. Jim tells Huck the story of his daughter’s deafness, causing Huck to reason that
Jim was not just a slave, but a man—“white inside” and that they are family. Jim’s
morality and conscience teaches Huck how to be a good man and complicates his
decision as to whether he will free Jim after his capture.
QUESTIONS
1. Ask students: What is a “confidence” man, a.k.a. con man? What scams have you
heard about in your own neighborhood or state? Did these frauds prey on the
confidence of the people they conned? How do the King and the Duke play on the
confidences of people to get their money? What do they have to know about the
towns, local people, and human nature in order to perfect their scams?
2. Though both men are criminal in their behavior, each is different in his
understanding of and abuse of people. Make two columns and list the differences in
the King and the Duke. How is one morally superior to the other? Which do you
like least and why?
3. since Huck quickly understands the King and Duke are con men, why doesn’t he
confront them or tell Jim?
4. How and by whom is Jim betrayed? Have other slaves been similarly treated by this
character? How does Huck respond to Jim’s capture?
5. Twain is a master of satire and of irony. List ironic episodes in this section and
explain how Twain uses them to affect readers. A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
QUOTATIONS TO CONSIDER
1. “sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time…It’s
lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used
to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or only
just happened” (120).
2. “It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor
dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never
let on.…If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get
along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way” (125-6).
3. “’The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight
with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass,
and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath
pitifulness….If any real lynching’s going to be done it will be done in the dark,
southern fashion’” (145-6).
4. “What was the use to tell Jim these warn’t real kings and dukes? It wouldn’t ‘a’ done no
good; and besides, it was just as I said: you couldn’t tell them from the real kind” (153).
5. “I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t
seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.…He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was” (153).
6. “Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body
ashamed of the human race” (160).
7. “And when it comes to beauty—and goodness, too—she lays over them all…but I
reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she
would pray for me; and if ever I’d ‘a’ thought it would do any good for me to pray
for her, blamed if I wouldn’t ‘a’ done it or bust” (186).
8. “…deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a
lie—I found that out….I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says
to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’—and tore it up” (206-7).
Chapters 32-43: The Rescue and Happy Endings:
Realism vs. Romanticism, Reality vs. Imagination
The final segment of the novel is organized around Huck’s desire to rescue Jim from the
Phelps family farm, a desire soon controlled by the chance arrival of Tom sawyer, the
nephew of Mrs. Phelps. since the opening chapters of the novel in which Tom organizes
his playmates into bandits along the guidelines of his romantic reading material, mostly
involving imagination and pretense, Huck has lived life on the river and come into his
own. However, with the introduction of Tom, who calls himself sid sawyer, so that Huck
may assume Tom’s identity, the rescue of Jim is taken over by Tom, using The Count of
Monte Cristo, Arabian Nights, and other novels to create “regulations” for rescuing prisoners
from dungeons.
This part of the adventures presents readers with a close comparison of real
and imaginary, truth and fiction. Tom wishes to create Jim as a hero by putting him through
unnecessary miseries, although those “complications” are a great deal of fun for Tom. Huck
is rendered Tom’s idiot, and Jim becomes slave to Tom’s imagination. Twain’s satire reveals
the difference between Huck’s real-life adventure surviving along the river, learning important
lessons, and growing to manhood and Tom’s book-driven, impractical imaginary adventures
that still make him look and behave as a child. The real world wins in this contest, as Tom
is shot, Jim acquires heroism by nursing him and assisting the doctor, and Huck proves his
friendship to both by getting them the help they need even if he is punished.
Failing to grasp that Jim is a husband and father, the boys plan their next adventure in
Indian Territory—away from “civilized” people and rules, and, in Huck’s case, Aunt
sally’s adoption. By the closing chapters of the novel, readers will recognize that although
both Huck and Jim have been unwittingly free of their individual slaveries for some time,
they are improved and humanized by their seeking freedom. Whether or not this pursuit
has civilized them is another question.
QUESTIONS
1. Define the words “adventure” and “heroism” as Huck would and as Tom would. Then compare each boy’s idea of how Jim should be rescued, according to these definitions. Who is the hero of this novel, Huck or Jim? List ways in which each has proven his heroism.
2. Why does Tom sawyer so readily agree to rescue Jim, when Huck has understood
that Tom hates abolitionists? Is Tom changed by his effort to save Jim?
3. How are heart and conscience in conflict in Huck’s seeing Jim as his friend and
family, and as a slave? What details of their trip down the Mississippi does Huck
recall that soften him towards Jim? How has Jim helped Huck be a better person?
4. Compare Pap and Jim as father figures to Huck. How has their treatment affected
Huck’s view of family? (Is Jim’s mistreatment of his deaf daughter comparable to
Pap’s abuse of Huck?)
5. several characters have kept secrets from others in the novel. Jim doesn’t tell Huck
he is free of Pap. Tom doesn’t tell Jim he was freed on Miss Watson’s death. Huck
doesn’t tell Jim that the King and Duke are scoundrels and conmen. How would
these truths have changed the outcome of the novel and the characters themselves
had they been revealed? Is keeping a secret the same as a lie in these cases?
QUOTATIONS TO CONSIDER
1. “I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence
to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for I’d noticed that
Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if I left it alone” (212).
2. “You’ll say it’s dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? I’m low down; and I’m agoing to steal him, and I want you to keep mum and not let on. Will you?” (218).
3. “I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any
hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human
beings can be awful cruel to one another” (223).
4. “Here was a boy that was respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose;
and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and
knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without
anymore pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself
a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. I couldn’t understand it no way at
all. It was outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his
true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself” (225).
5. “Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the
most interlectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up
all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out; for he believed Jim
would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it” (239).
6. “I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he’d say what he did say—so it was
all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor” (263).
7. “…there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d
‘a’ knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t ‘a’ tackled it, and ain’t
a-going to no more” (279).
8. “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” (279).