Huckleberry Finn

5 Pages 1359 Words

Summary

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens by familiarizing the reader with the events of the book that preceded it, Tom Sawyer. In the town of St. Petersburg, which lies along the Mississippi River, Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a father, and his friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination a little too active for his own good, found a robber's stash of gold at the end of the earlier book. As a result of his adventure, Huck gains quite a bit of money (held in a sort of trust for him at the bank) and is adopted by the Widow Douglas, a kind but stifling woman who lives with her sister, the self-righteous Miss Watson. Huck is none too thrilled with his new life of cleanliness, manners, church, and school, but he sticks it out at the bequest of Tom, who tells him that in order to take part in his new "robbers' gang" Huck must stay "respectable." All is well and good until Huck's brutish father, Pap, reappears and demands Huck's money. Judge Thatcher and the Widow try to get legal custody of Huck, but the well-intentioned new judge in town believes in the rights of Huck's natural father and even takes the old drunk into his own home in an attempt to reform him. This effort fails miserably, and Pap soon returns to his old ways. He hangs around town for several months, harassing his son, who in the meantime has learned to read and to tolerate the Widow's attempts to improve him. Finally, outraged when the Widow Douglas warns him to stay away from her house, Pap kidnaps the boy, holding him in a cabin across the river from St. Petersburg.

Whenever he goes out, Pap locks Huck in the cabin, and when he returns home drunk, he beats the boy. Tired of his confinement, and fearing the beatings will worsen, Huck escapes from Pap by faking his own death. Hiding on Jackson's Island out in the middle of the Mississippi River, he watches the townspeople search the river for his body. After a few days on t...