The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

The story starts in fictional St. Petersburg, MO, on the Mississippi. Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn have each come into a considerable money as a result of earlier adventures in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huck's been placed under the Widow Douglas' guardianship, who, together with her sister, Miss Watson, attempt to "sivilize" him. Huck appreciates the effort, but finds civilized life confining. Tom appears, helping Huck escape at night from the house, past Miss Watson's slave, Jim. They meet up with Tom's self-proclaimed gang, plotting adventurous crimes. Huck's life changes with the appearance of his shiftless father, "Pap", an abusive drunk. Altho he's successful preventing Pap from acquiring his fortune, Pap gains custody & the two move to the backwoods where he's locked in a cabin. He escapes, elaborately fakes his own death & sets off down the river. While living miserably along the Mississippi, Huck encounters Jim on Jackson's Island. He's also run away because all slaves do that. They team up & shortly after missing their free state destination, Cairo, their raft is swamped by a passing steamship, separating them. Huck is given shelter by the prosperous Grangerford family. He becomes friends with Buck Grangerford, a boy his age. The Grangerfords are engaged in a 30-year blood feud with the Shepherdsons. The vendetta comes to crisis when Buck's sister, Sophia, elopes with Harney Shepherdson. In the resulting conflict, all Grangerford males are shot & killed. Seeing Buck's corpse, Huck is too devastated to write about what happened. He does describe how he narrowly avoided his own death in the gunfight, later reuniting with Jim & together fleeing. Further downriver, Jim & Huck rescue two grifters who join them on the raft. The younger of the two, a man of about thirty, introduces himself as a son of an English duke, his father's rightful successor. The older one, about seventy, then trumps that claim by alleging he's actually the Dauphin, son of Louis XVI & rightful King of France. Duke & King make Jim & Huck allow them to travel on the raft, committing a series of confidence schemes on the way. As these schemes unfold, Huck sees the attempted lynching of a southern gentleman, Col. Sherburn, for killing a harmless town drunk. Sherburn faces down the mob with a rifle & forces them to back down after an extended speech regarding what he believes to be the essential cowardice of Southern justice, the lynch mob. The Duke & King's schemes peak when they impersonate the brothers of Peter Wilks, a recently deceased man of property. Using an absurd English accent, the King manages to convince townspeople he & the Duke are Wilks's brothers recently arrived from England, & proceeds to liquidate the estate. Huck's upset at the men's plan to steal the inheritance from Wilks's daughters & brothers, as well as their actions in selling slaves & separating their families. To thwart their plans, Huck steals the money the two have acquired, hiding it in Wilks's coffin. Shortly thereafter, the two cons are exposed when two others claiming to be the Wilks's true brothers arrive. When the money is found in the coffin, both escape in the confusion, rejoining Huck & Jim on the raft. After the four fugitives flee farther south on the raft, the King "captures" Jim & sells his interest in any reward while Huck is away in a nearby town. Outraged, Huck rejects the advice of his conscience, which tells him that in helping Jim escape to freedom, he's stealing Miss Watson's property. Telling himself "All right, then, I'll go to hell!", Huck resolves to free Jim. Huck discovers, upon arriving at the house in which Jim is held, that the King has sold his supposed interest in Jim for $40 to Silas Phelps, Sawyer's uncle. Silas's wife, Aunt Sally, mistakes Huck for Tom himself. Huck plays along, hoping to find a way to free Jim. Then Tom himself arrives for a visit, & agrees to join Huck's scheme, pretending to be his own half-brother, Sid Sawyer. Jim reveals the secret of the Royal Nonesuch before the two rogues set their confidence game into motion. That night the Duke & King are captured by townspeople & are tarred, feathered & run out of town on a rail. Rather than simply sneaking Jim out of the shed where he's held, Tom develops a plan involving secret messages, hidden tunnels, a rope ladder sent in Jim's food & other elements from popular novels, including a note to the Phelps warning them of an Indian tribe stealing their runaway slave. Huck & Jim go along with the plan, but Tom is shot in the leg during the pursuit. Rather than complete his escape, Jim insists Huck return to town to find a doctor. This is the first time that Jim demands something from a white person. Huck explains this by saying "I knowed he was white on the inside." Jim & Tom are captured & returned by the doctor. After Jim's recapture, Tom's Aunt Polly arrives & reveals Huck's & Tom's true identities. Tom announces Jim's been free ...