FREE ESSAY ON HUCK FINN

HUCK FINN

This story started out sometime in the mid-1800s in the small town of Hannibal, Missouri.
A few months earlier Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn discovered a chest full of gold. The
two adventurous boys split the twelve-thousand dollars, and Judge Thatcher was keeping
their money safe in a trust. In the meantime, Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson,
realizing Huck's unsophisticated ways, took him into their home to try to sivilize him.
Huck learned to read and write and even acquired some religion, but he didn't like it too
much that Miss Watson continually tried to vanquish his smoking and swearing.
One day Huck saw footprints in the snow and realized that his father was back in town.
This made Huck very uncomfortable because his father stayed drunk and beat him whenever
he felt like it (which was most of the time). Huck knew the only reason his Pap came back
was to collect his son's money. After finding out about his Pap, Huck went quickly over
to Judge Thatcher's house to sign away the right to his share of the twelve thousand
dollars. Since he had no money now, he figured his father wouldn't bother him.
A few nights later, Huck found his Pap, looking very rough and ragged, sitting in a chair
in his room. Pap was very angry with Huck for becoming smarter than his father and
threatened to beat him if he didn't quit learning. Pap took Huck's only dollar and left,
but showed up the next day at Judge Thatcher's house claiming to be Huck's legal
guardian. Pap demanded the money that was in Huck's name, but the judge refused.
A while later, Pap became desperate and kidnapped his son. He took him to a one-room log
hut where Huck was kept locked up whenever Pap had to leave. Huck didn't like this too
much, nor did he like the daily beatings he received when Pap was drunk. Despite this,
Huck rather enjoyed not having to be civilized anymore. One night after Pap threatened to
kill Huck, the boy decided he had taken enough; he was going to escape.
The next night while Pap was in town, Huck found a saw and cut out a piece of one of the
walls. He crawled through the hole and replaced the piece of wood so that Pap wouldn't
notice it. Huck then smashed the cabin door with an ax, spread blood from a pig he had
killed over the ground, and put some of his hair on the end of the blood-covered ax. He
was hoping Pap would think he had been murdered.
Huck camped out on the uninhabited Jackson Island for a few days. Then one night he
became scared when he saw a campfire that wasn't his. He was relieved to find out that it
belonged to Jim, Miss Watson's slave. Jim, thinking that Huck was a ghost, was very
frightened.
Huck eventually calmed Jim down and told him the whole story of his faked death. Jim then
explained to Huck that he had run away after hearing that Miss Watson was planning to
sell him. After their talk, the two runaways made camp together.
One night after a bad storm, Jim and Huck saw a frame house floating down the river. Jim
found a dead man inside, but warned Huck not to look at him. He said the sight was too
awful. They searched for items they might could use later, and then they let the house
float on down the river.
Nothing exciting had happened lately, so Huck decided to go into town dressed like a girl
to see if he could gather some gossip. He learned that some people in Hannibal thought
Huck's Pap had killed him since he had disappeared just a few days earlier; others
thought Jim did it since the two had vanished on the same day. Huck overheard a group of
men talking about going to Jackson Island that night to see if they could find Jim. Huck
immediately rushed back to Jim and said they had to leave right then.
The two got their things together and headed down the Mississippi on a tent-covered raft.
They planned to board a north-bound steamship so Jim could get money to buy his family's
freedom. Although Jim was a good friend, Huck still felt guilty; Jim was Miss Watson's
property and had run away. Huck decided he would turn Jim in the next chance he got. When
a group of men on a boat came up looking for runaways, Huck realized he could not turn
Jim over to them. He told the men that the man in the tent was his father who was
stricken with smallpox. The men paddled away in a hurry without checking the cargo.
They continued downstream, and one night they heard a steamboat coming close to them
through the thick fog. Jim and Huck jumped from the raft to avoid being hurt when the
raft was struck, and in the process the two were separated.
Huck was taken in by the wealthy Grangerford family. They were a nice, generous family
who treated Huck very well. For reasons no one could remember, they were in a feud with
another family - the Shepardsons.
One day one of the Grangerford's slaves asked Huck to come into the woods to see some
snakes. Instead of snakes, he found Jim there waiting for him. That night after Huck and
Jim had left, the two feuding families were involved in a fight and the entire
Grangerford family was killed.
Huck and Jim picked up two men a few days later as they were sailing down the river. One
said he was the Duke of Bridgewater, and the other claimed to be the Dauphin of France.
Huck knew they were lying, but he wanted to have some fun, so he played along with them.
The two men stopped every once in a while at towns along the shore to carry out
money-grabbing schemes. At one town, the Dauphin pretended to be the deaf-and-dumb
brother of Peter Wilkes who had just recently died. Wilkes' daughters gave the Duke and
Dauphin the three thousand dollar inheritance that their father had left for his brother.
Mad at all the lying that the men were doing, Huck stole the money and hid it in Peter
Wilkes' coffin to later be found by his daughters.
The next day the real brother showed up and the Duke and Dauphin were put in jail. As
Huck and Jim were getting ready to sail off on their raft, the two con-artists came
running down the bank to catch another ride.
The next day, after touring another town, Huck returned to the raft to find Jim missing.
The two men had sold him to Silas Phelps.
Huck knew he had to rescue Jim, and he went immediately to the Phelps Plantation.
Tom Sawyer's Aunt lived there, and she mistook Huck for Tom. Huck played along and
pretended to be Tom.
Tom eventually showed up and Huck then pretended to be Tom's cousin, Sid. The two boys
devised a plan to free Jim. They dug a tunnel into Jim's hut, and Huck left a letter for
Mr. Phelps that said a gang of cutthroats had stolen Jim. Heading back to the raft, they
were chased by a gang of farmers with guns. Tom was shot in the leg, and the three were
captured.
Tom explained to everyone that Miss Watson had died two months earlier and had set Jim
free in her will. Jim was immediately released, and Mr. Phelps gave him a suit and forty
dollars.
Before Jim left he told Huck that the dead body they had seen in the house floating down
the river was Huck's Pap. This didn't bother Huck since he didn't care too much for his
Pap anyway.
When Aunt Sally offered to adopt Huck, he decided he had better disappear again, lest he
be sivilized.
I enjoyed reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I liked the way Huck didn't conform
to the rules of society. He liked Jim for the person he was. He learned that being a
different race doesn't make a person inferior or unequal. 
I also liked the way Huck was so innocent, and the adventures were fun without having bad
purposes behind them like so many other adventure stories.
I think everyone would like to be as carefree and adventurous as Huck Finn every once in
a while.