The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck's education is satired, to some extent, in the novel. Huck informs Jim of a number of ideas he has come across in school, most of which are erroneous. His sense of history is way, way off,...

The story of Colonel Sherburn reads like a story within a story. It has nothing to do with the overall plot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. However, it does illustrate a larger topic that...

Mark Twain makes extensive use of imagery, often through employing figurative language, throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. During much of the novel Huck is traveling along the...

There are several deaths throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The first one would be the symbolic death of Huck. Huck fakes his death to get away from Pap and is metaphorically reborn on...

As was mentioned in the previous post, Huck and Tom devise different plans to free Jim beginning in Chapter 34. Before Huck even begins to think of his plan, he knows that they will end up...

One example of satire that adds to the overall meaning of this novel is Twain's satirization of religion. He does this most obviously through his treatment of the Phelps family. The Phelps family...

Fifteen chapters of Huckleberry Finn is a lot of novel and many "conflicts" so I will only add a few to supplement the excellent answers already provided. One important conflict is symbolized by...

At the beginning of chapter 10, Huck tells Jim that he does not believe in bad luck. He tells Jim, “What did you say when I fetched in the snake-skin I found on top of the ridge day before...

A good example of Twain’s use of irony occurs when Huck struggles with whether or not he should turn in Jim and go to hell for doing it. This type of irony, known as dramatic irony, occurs when...

One of the most prominent of Huck's lies occurs when he fakes his own death to escape from Pap Finn, who would otherwise ruin Huck's life. It is a justifiable lie because Pap is a hopeless...

How can you narrow it down??! Well, the conflict of social inequity is certainly at the forefront of this novel. The theme of justice certainly ties into this, as well. The Widow Douglas tries to...

Huck is a young and naive protagonist. Like satirists before him, most notably Swift and Voltaire, Twain uses a naive character who initially buys unthinkingly into what his warped social order...

In chapter eight, Jim confesses to Huck that he has "run off." Though Huck is initially shocked, he agrees to listen to Jim without telling on him. Huck reassures Jim that "people would call me a...

You are right in identifying the river as an incredibly important symbol in this novel. One section that focuses on the river and how it operates in the lives of Jim and Huck is at the beginning of...

Mark Twain uses several examples of hyperbole in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to exaggerate a feeling so that it has an effect on the reader. Hyperbole is often used to dramatize a situation....

Huck knows the two men are frauds because they are running away, but he doesn’t want to make trouble so he goes along with it. Huck knows a king or a duke would be gaudily dressed and full of...

Here are a few more examples of literary devices in these two chapters: Simile: The king is described as being "as splendid as a rainbow" in chapter 23. The simile establishes a comparison between...

Huck is not at all fond of religion.  In the first chapter of the novel, he tells how Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas are constantly bombarding him with do's and don'ts and attaching...

With the work of Emmeline Grangerford, Twain satirizes Gothic, Romantic literature. It is fair to say that Emmeline's subject matter suggests an obsession with death and borders on the macabre, not...

For Huck Finn, "civilization" represents the mores of the slave-owning society that he thinks he should follow but that he can't actually follow. Huck is hard on himself for not being able to abide...

I'm guessing that your question is prompted by all the time that Huck and Jim spend naked on the raft together. You may also be puzzled by the term of endearment, "honey," that Jim uses towards...

I think the following points of comparison are significant: Both are very superstitious - which connects them in some ways, provides conflict at other times. Both are running away and hiding in the...

A great scene that helps us to characterize Jim. Jim's hairball (according to Jim) works like a magic ball - it tells the future. Of course, it only tells the future if it is first provided some...

The Duke and King are trying to increase spectators to their theatrical productions. After poor turnout to their badly performed Shakespeare Recitation, the Duke decides that what these...

In Chapter Eight of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck bumps into Jim on his fourth day on the island. Although Jim initially thinks that Huck is a ghost, he is eventually able to settle down...

Jim is portrayed as being very unintelligent through the first third of the novel. The trick that Tom and Huck play on Jim is thoroughly stereotypical as is Jim's assertion of his knowledge of the...

Revealed in Chapter 1 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the hypocrisy of the seemingly “sivilized” Miss Watson. Huck describes Miss Watson’s constant critique and says, “…they...

Tom and Huck are similar in several ways. Both boys love adventure, although while Tom experiences adventure through his imagination that comes from romantic novels, Huck, a realist, lives his...

Huckleberry Finn has a three-part narrative structure. The first eleven chapters take place in or around "civilization," which is represented by the world of St. Petersburg, Missouri. These...

We're not told specifically how Jim's story of 'Lizabeth changes Huck's view of Jim. The story Jim tells is about his daughter 'Lizabeth recovering after a bout of scarlet fever. Jim gets angry at...

One of the similarities between the two is that they both feel free out there in the great outdoors. Huck has never known anything else in life; since he was knee-high to a grasshopper he's had to...

As Huck ruminates over whether he should turn Jim in for being a runaway slave, he decides he can't. In the world in which he has been raised, he has been taught that helping a slave escape is a...

As stated in other answers, Huck fakes his death in order to escape his abusive father and also to escape the whole society of St Petersburg which he finds oppressive: indeed, repressive. From the...

The Grangerfords' house is a grand, stately pile, the epitome of gracious Southern living. Huck's never seen anything quite like it. It's a large house with several acres of land, worked by over a...

Beside being a satire on frontier feuds, many critics also see this episode as a commentary on the youths that died needlessly during the civil war. The Grangerfords and Sheperdsons have been...

As far as I know, there is no chapter titled "I discover Moses and the Bulrushers". The chapter that this event occurs in is in chapter one, which is entitled "Civilizing Huck-Miss Watson-Tom...

Huck goes to the circus after witnessing a man gunned down in the street. He has experienced mob violence and the cowardly acts of men who won't stand up for themselves. The town is dirty, the...

Huck is averse to being "sivilized". The stiff, uncomfortable clothes the widow makes him wear cause him to "sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up", and he chafes under the...

Huck's crisis could be summed up as his natural sense of decency and morality colliding with conventional southern moral teachings. Conventional morality, buttressed as Huck understands it, by the...

The emphasis on the use of the vernacular throughout the story reinforces the sense that it deals with people who are generally removed from more mainstream, polite society. The language of the of...

Fog is an interesting weather feature. In simplest terms, it is a cloud at ground level. That shouldn't be scary or ominous. Most people remember times when they looked up into the sky and imagined...

Life on the raft represents freedom for both Jim and Huck. On dry land, they feel restricted in their movements—especially Jim, who, as a slave, has no freedom in so-called civilized society. As...

Jim's story about the way he treated his deaf daughter illustrates his deep and abiding love for his family, and sense of decency and compassion that causes him to still berate himself for...

The brave independence of spirit and of moral thinking expressed in Huck's narrative suggests that maturity of years is less important to spiritual or emotional maturity than honesty is. Huck is...

Tom's escape plan reads like a litany of adventure stories. His initial plan undergoes considerable revisions and additions as time goes on, becoming comically elaborate. While Huck suggested...

Huck matures through facing the moral dilemma of whether he should help Jim escape slavery. All his life, Huck's society has taught him the warped morality that helping a slave escape is a great...

When examining the satire of the text, the quotes can be read in a variety of ways. Here is an alternative reading that I encourage my students to follow: he raised his son to go to work and do...

Ah, this is a nice touch by Twain. The first time Twain mentions this, he just says that Emmeline Grangerford "took sick." However, within a page or two he turns this into a nicely sarcastic...

Huck pretends that he and his father have a disease so the bounty hunters do not come closer. When Huck runs into the men who are looking for slaves, he has a decision to make. At this point,...

The camp meeting is a large rural community gathering that functions literally as a “sideshow” of human behavior for Huck and Jim. Like a country fair, music festival, or church service, the camp...