and of outgrowing things he now believes. As you read on, you’ll see
some of this taking place.
—————————————————————–
The chapter ends with Huck dressing up as a girl so he can go to
town and find out the latest news about him and Jim. He puts on a
dress and a bonnet that they took from the floating house the night
before. After paddling the canoe to the mainland, he finds himself
outside the house of someone who has just moved into town.
CHAPTER 11
-
In this chapter the question of lying will come up again. You
remember that Huck gave up $6000 to avoid having to tell his father
a lie. In this chapter you’ll see him concoct tales about himself with
all the confidence of an experienced artist painting a portrait.
He not only has no qualms about telling such lies, he seems to enjoy
it (and he’s very good at it, besides). As you read the chapter, think
about his apparently contradictory attitude toward telling the truth.
He goes into the woman’s house and presents himself as a girl on her
way to her uncle’s house at the other end of town. He gets the woman
to talking, and when she finally gets around to the stuff that
matters, he learns that Pap has disappeared and that Jim is a prime
suspect in Huck’s murder. Worse than that, the woman has seen campfire
smoke on Jackson’s Island. Her husband is planning to go there with
a friend late that night to hunt for the runaway slave and collect the
reward.
In his nervousness over hearing this news, Huck starts fooling
with the woman’s sewing equipment. She watches him try to thread a
needle, and the way he does it makes her suspicious. She then comes up
with two other “tests” for Huck, and the way he reacts convinces her
she’s talking to a boy, not a girl.
Has Huck’s real identity been discovered? Huck is too quick witted
to let that happen. He admits that the woman is right, but makes up
a sad story about the terrible events that led him to try this
disguise. The woman not only believes him; she offers him some
advice on how to act more like a girl, and she prepares a snack for
him to have on the rest of his trip. (You’ll have to decide for
yourself on the reliability of the woman’s tests for the differences
between males and females.)
As soon as Huck’s out of the woman’s sight, he races to the canoe
and paddles back to the island. He stops first at the north end and
lights a campfire to attract the men who will be looking for Jim. Then
he goes to the south end and rouses Jim.
When Huck says “They’re after us!,” Jim acts quickly, without asking
questions. They pack everything they own on the raft, push it out, and
silently leave the island. Their long journey down the Mississippi
River has begun.
CHAPTER 12
-
With this chapter, the main part of the book begins. Chapters 12 and
13 deal with Huck and Jim’s first adventure while traveling along
the Mississippi.
Huck begins by telling us that Jim built a wigwam on the raft so
they could keep their things dry, and he even built a fire when it
rained. (Keep in mind that the raft is 12 x 16 feet, about as big as a
large bedroom in many modern houses.)
He gives us another of his quietly moving descriptions of living
on the river, including a comment on seeing the city of St. Louis
for the first time. He describes going ashore late each night to buy
food and to “borrow” things they couldn’t afford.
This section includes some interesting distinctions between stealing
and borrowing. There’s no doubt that Twain intended the distinctions
to be funny; but they also remind us that Huck has a private set of
moral standards. The standards may be unconventional, and sometimes
laughable, but he does try to live up to them, and that’s an important
thing to remember.
Then comes the incident with the disabled steamboat, the Walter
Scott. In using this name for a ship that was on the verge of sinking,
Twain was probably making a small joke. Sir Walter Scott, author of
Ivanhoe and other romantic novels, was a popular novelist in the
19th century. Twain often wrote scathing criticisms of such novels,
believing that they were written by hacks who knew little about the
real world and nothing about the people who live in it.
—————————————————————–
NOTE: Twain has Huck describe his search of the steamboat in some
detail, and he uses a number of nautical terms you might find
confusing. Here’s a brief glossary that should make your reading a bit
more enjoyable:
-
TEXAS A shelter for officers on the upper deck, also called the
texas deck
PILOT-HOUSE An enclosed structure from which the ship is navigated
DERRICK A device for lifting cargo on or off the ship
LABBOARD (larboard) The left side of the ship
STABBOARD (starboard) The right side
GUYS Ropes or cables
SKYLIGHT The pilot-house roof, which can be opened and closed
—————————————————————–
Against Jim’s wishes, they climb aboard the steamboat to see what
they can find. When they hear voices, Jim races back to the raft,
but Huck is too curious to leave without finding out what’s going on.
The justification he uses is interesting: “Tom Sawyer wouldn’t
back out now.” After all the things that have happened to Huck, and
even now, in the midst of something really dangerous, he still sees
himself as a follower of a boy who “holds up” Sunday School picnics
and steals turnips.
When he finds out that the voices belong to three thieves, and
that murder is part of their plan, Huck decides to get out. Jim
gives him the bad news that the raft has broken loose, and the chapter
ends with a cliffhanger.
CHAPTER 13
-
Huck knows that a steamboat always has a small boat- a skiff- that’s
used for taking one or two people ashore in shallow water, and he
and Jim start looking for it. They almost lose their chance at the
skiff, since two of the thieves plan on using it themselves; they mean
to abandon the third to sink along with the steamboat.
But greed interrupts their escape, and the two thieves go back
inside to get some money they’ve left behind. Huck and Jim get into
the skiff, cut it loose, and silently slip away.
As soon as they’re free, Huck begins to worry- not about himself and
Jim, but about the three men they have left stranded. He thinks of
“how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix,” and he
tells Jim he wants to go ashore and try to get some help for them.
They find the raft, load it with the thieves’ loot from the skiff,
and climb aboard. Then Huck arranges for a meeting place with Jim
and rows the skiff to the shore.
The scene that follows is interesting in two respects. First, you’ll
see Huck once again proving himself a champion liar- or yarn
spinner, as Twain probably would have preferred to think of him. In
order to save the three criminals from almost certain drowning, he
tells a ferryboat captain an elaborate tale about his family being
stranded on the disabled steamboat.
The second thing to note about the scene is Huck’s quick mind and
his understanding of what makes people tick. Early in the conversation
the captain makes a chance reference to someone named Jim Hornback.
Huck is shrewd enough to figure out how the captain feels about
Hornback, and he works the man’s name into his plea for help.
When he leaves the captain, Huck feels better for having done what
he could to help the men. “I wished the widow knowed about it,” he
says. “I judged she would be proud of me for helping these
rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead-beats is the kind the
widow and good people takes the most interest in.”
What Huck is referring to here- without realizing it, of course-
is the traditional Christian belief that sinners deserve more help
than the rest of us. Several of the parables of Jesus in the New
Testament make this point.
Huck doesn’t understand why good people would be most interested
in helping “rapscallions and deadbeats,” but his instinctive urge to
help such lowlife puts him much closer to at least one Christian ideal
than almost everybody he comes across in this novel.
CHAPTER 14
-
Read Chapters 14 to 16 together and you’ll see three important
developments. First, the relationship between Huck and Jim begins to
change, in a way that Huck would never have considered possible.
Second, Huck has serious doubts about the morality of helping a
slave escape. And third, the two of them are separated by an
accident on the river.
You might find several different layers of meaning in Chapter 14.
I’ll talk about two of them here.
The first level is the comic one. Huck and Jim have a conversation
that’s similar to dozens you’ve seen in movies and TV comedies,
usually with comedy teams.
In this “classic” comedy situation, two characters are talking about
a subject, and neither one knows very much about it. But one of the
characters is the dominant one, in charge of the situation, maybe even
the bully. The audience knows that they’re both uninformed, and that’s
where the laughs come from. The dominant character always wins the
argument, of course, but not because he or she really knows more.
If you aren’t familiar with Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello,
you may remember Lucy and Ethel from the TV series “I Love Lucy.”
All three pairs of comedians used this kind of comedy routine, and
earlier in the book Twain used it himself, when Tom Sawyer called Huck
“a perfect saphead” for not understanding things. (He’ll use it again,
often.)
In this chapter Huck is the dominant character because he’s white.
He and Jim talk about the Old Testament story of King Solomon, who had
a reputation for being wise. In the biblical story, two women came
to him to settle a dispute over who is the real mother of the baby
that one of them was carrying.
Solomon said there was no way to settle the dispute, and he
ordered that the baby be cut in two, and one half be given to each
woman. One woman said that was fine with her; the other was appalled
at the suggestion and offered to give up her claim to allow the baby
to live. Solomon concluded that the second woman was the real mother
and gave the baby to her.
Jim contends that no really wise man would have suggested cutting
a baby in two as a solution to a dispute. Huck tries to tell him
he’s missing the point, but Jim is adamant in contending that it was a
stupid thing to do.
The outcome of the argument is the second level of meaning in the
chapter. The important thing to notice is that Huck gives in without
winning the argument. Huck is willing to lose an argument to a
slave; and Jim dares to argue with a white person until he wins.
Without realizing it, both characters have undergone a radical
change in their attitudes, a change that would have shocked just about
everyone they both knew.
The chapter ends with a second argument, which Jim also wins. This
one shows Twain having some fun with one of his favorite targets-
the French. He had a powerful bias against the French people, the
French language, and- most of all- Americans who spoke French and wore French clothing to show how sophisticated they were. He gets in a
little dig at these people at the end of Chapter 14.
One other point: showing off his superior knowledge, Huck tells
Jim that the son of the French king is “the dolphin.” The real word is
dauphin, pronounced doe-FAN. It’s only a small joke here, but the word
will come up again later in the novel.
CHAPTER 15
-
Huck figures that they’re now only three nights away from Cairo,
Illinois, the point at which they’ll be in a free state and Jim can
stop running. The next night, though, they run into a heavy fog.
Huck gets into the canoe to look for a place to tie the raft to, and
he loses the raft.
What follows is another detailed description of the river; this one,
though, is not touching, but frightening. Huck goes on for three
full pages, telling us exactly what he did to try to get together with
Jim in the fog, and it’s easy to hear the experienced voice of Mark
Twain, river pilot, in this passage.
When he finally does find the raft, Jim is sound asleep at the
steering oar, and Huck decides to play a prank on him. He wakes Jim
and pretends nothing has happened.
Jim figures he must have dreamed the whole thing, and he goes
through an elaborate interpretation of what each detail symbolized.
When he’s finished, Huck shows him that it really did happen, and that
he’s just been the butt of a joke.
Jim’s reaction to this is very emotional- and very daring for a
slave who hasn’t reached a free state yet. He says he was ready to die
when he thought he’d lost Huck. He adds that anyone who would play
such a prank on a friend is trash.
Try to imagine it. Try to reconstruct the relationship that
existed between all white people and all black people in a Southern
state in the middle of the 19th century. All his life, Jim has known
that he could be hanged for talking to a white person- any white
person- the way he has talked to Huck. As for Huck, all his life
he’s known that he has the right to have such a black person hanged.
But this knowledge doesn’t stop Jim from saying what he feels,
because he no longer thinks of Huck as a white person. He thinks of
him as a friend.
Huck is a little less certain. “It was fifteen minutes,” he tells
us, “before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a
nigger.”
But he does it. He apologizes to Jim who, at least for the moment,
is his friend, and not a black man.
This apology sets the stage for the next chapter, when Huck makes an
enormously important moral decision.
CHAPTER 16
-
As they get closer and closer to Cairo, both Huck and Jim begin
getting fidgety. Jim’s nervousness stems, of course, from his
closeness to freedom, something he might never have dreamed of
before his impulsive decision to run away.
Huck, however, is troubled by his gradual realization of exactly
what he’s doing. For the first time, he begins thinking about what
it means to help a slave escape from his owner.
As we’ve seen in earlier chapters, Huck has a sense of right and
wrong that would shame some of the people he refers to as his
“betters.” His conscience is now causing him a great deal of pain
because he can’t find an easy solution to his dilemma. Does he live up
to the rules of the society he’s been brought up in? Or does he do
what seems to be the right thing for a friend?
When he hears Jim talk about getting an Abolitionist to help him
steal his children- children that belong to someone Huck doesn’t
even know- Huck freezes with fear. At that point his conscience
tells him to do the right thing- to turn the runaway slave in.
With the excuse that he’s going to see how far they are from
Cairo, Huck begins paddling the canoe to shore so he can tell the
authorities about Jim. He loses some of his resolve, however, when his
friend calls out that Huck is the only white gentleman who ever kept
his promise to old Jim.
On his way to the shore he’s stopped by two men looking for
runaway slaves. He’s now faced directly with the choice of “doing
the right thing” or turning his friend in. He decides to do wrong.
He tells the men he’s traveling with a white man.
“I warn’t man enough,” he tells us. “Hadn’t the spunk of a
rabbit.” It never occurs to him that what he’s done might be
considered the right thing. He has too low an opinion of himself to
think that. Instead, he makes excuses for acting the way he did.
—————————————————————–
NOTE: Huck feels terrible for having done wrong. But if he had
turned Jim in, he certainly wouldn’t have felt any better. So why do
right, he reasons, when it doesn’t feel any better?
What he’s trying to work out here is a conflict that everyone has to
face many times in life. Do you live by the rules that someone else
has taught you, even if they don’t make much sense to you? Or do you