Adventures of Huckleberry

Adventures of Huckleberry by Mark Twain

Pap forcibly moves Huck to an abandoned cabin in the woods along the Illinois shoreline. To evade further violence and escape imprisonment, Huck elaborately fakes his own murder, steals his father's provisions, and sets off downriver in a 13/14-foot long canoe he finds drifting downstream. Soon, he settles comfortably on Jackson's Island, where he reunites with Jim, Miss Watson's slave. Jim has also run away after he overheard Miss Watson planning to sell him "down the river" to presumably more brutal owners. Jim plans to make his way to the town of Cairo in Illinois, a free state, so that he can later buy the rest of his enslaved family's freedom. At first, Huck is conflicted about the sin and crime of supporting a runaway slave, but as the two talk in-depth and bond over their mutually held superstitions, Huck emotionally connects with Jim, who increasingly becomes Huck's close friend and guardian. After heavy flooding on the river, the two find a raft (which they keep) as well as an entire house floating on the river (Chapter 9: "The House of Death Floats By"). Entering the house to seek loot, Jim finds the naked body of a dead man lying on the floor, shot in the back. He prevents Huck from viewing the corpse.[6] To find out the latest news in town, Huck dresses as a girl and enters the house of Judith Loftus, a woman new to the area. Huck learns from her about the news of his own supposed murder; Pap was initially blamed, but since Jim ran away he is also a suspect and a reward of 300 dollars for Jim's capture has initiated a manhunt. Mrs. Loftus becomes increasingly suspicious that Huck is a boy, finally proving it by a series of tests. Huck develops another story on the fly and explains his disguise as the only way to escape from an abusive foster family. Once he is exposed, she nevertheless allows him to leave her home without commotion, not realizing that he is the allegedly murdered boy they have just been discussing. Huck returns to Jim to tell him the news and that a search party is coming to Jackson's Island that very night. The two hastily load up the raft and depart. After a while, Huck and Jim come across a grounded steamer. Searching it, they stumble upon two thieves named Bill and Jake Packard discussing murdering a third named Jim Turner, but they flee before being noticed in the thieves' boat as their raft has drifted away. They find their own raft again and keep the thieves' loot and sink the thieves' boat. Huck tricks a watchman on a steamer into going to rescue the thieves stranded on the wreck to assuage his conscience. They are later separated in a fog, making Jim (on the raft) intensely anxious, and when they reunite, Huck tricks Jim into thinking he dreamed the entire incident. Jim is not deceived for long and is deeply hurt that his friend should have teased him so mercilessly. Huck becomes remorseful and apologizes to Jim, though his conscience troubles him about humbling himself to a Black man.

Traveling onward, Huck and Jim's raft is struck by a passing steamship, again separating the two. Huck is given shelter on the Kentucky side of the river by the Grangerfords, an "aristocratic" family. He befriends Buck Grangerford, a boy about his age, and learns that the Grangerfords are engaged in a 30-year blood feud against another family, the Shepherdsons. Although Huck asks Buck why the feud started in the first place, he is told no one knows anymore. The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons go to the same church, which ironically preaches brotherly love. The vendetta finally comes to a head when Buck's older sister elopes with a member of the Shepherdson clan. In the resulting conflict, all the Grangerford males from this branch of the family are shot and killed by the remaining Shepherdsons — including Buck, whose horrific murder Huck witnesses. He is immensely relieved to be reunited with Jim, who has since recovered and repaired the raft.