The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 In order to validate Huck and Jim traveling together, Huck makes up a story and the King and the Duke print up a bill for Jim that declares a $200 reward for him.  This way, if anyone stops the raft they will claim they have already captured him and are bringing him back to get the reward.  The duke and the king go into a “camp meeting” where a preacher is vocally preaching and the King gets up and starts preaching himself.  The king simply can't resist. He begins preaching and shouting himself, and soon enough he's got everyone worked up in a religious frenzy and taking up a collection on his behalf (because he is a "reformed" and "changed" man, thanks to the Lord, etc., etc.).  And that's how the king returns to the raft with $87.75, and a three-gallon jug of whisky. (To help for the reformation.)  That night, Jim tells Huck he hopes they're not going to meet any more dukes or kings—he thinks two is plenty.

 The Duke and the King practice Shakespeare during these chapters and try to act out enough to put on a show. They effectively botch Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet (pgs )  They decide it's time to perform their show so around Arkansas, so they print up playbills using fake stage-names for themselves and charging 25 cents admission.  Before the show, though, Huck, the Duke, and the King meet the town drunk named Boggs.  The townspeople are used to Boggs and his empty threats, as he is very similar to Pap and threatens people that he doesn’t like quite often.  This time, Boggs makes the mistake of threatening Sherburn, a tough guy who owns the biggest store in town, and Sherburn comes out to the front of the store and gives Boggs a warning: leave by one o’ clock or die.  Boggs doesn’t leave and continues to insult Sherburn, so he shoots twice and kills Boggs, then he leaves.  Then the angry mob decides that they should put their angry mob skills to use and lynch Sherburn.

 The angry lunch mob decides to go to Sherburn’s house, where he is ready and waiting for them with his double-barreled shotgun. Sherburn is calm and composed.  Instead of retreating, he stares the mob down, laughs at them, and tells them that they are cowards and won’t be lynching anyone because it is day time and Sherburn is facing them.  The mob ends up leaving and doing exactly what Sherburn said they would (or wouldn’t) do.  That night, the duke and the king perform their "Shakespeare" to a group of poor, uneducated Arkansas townsfolk. The townsfolk don’t understand it and, therefore, don’t like it at all.  The con artists rethink their plan and decide to put on a show called “The Royal Nonesuch” the next night.

 Unlike the Shakespeare Revival, The Royal Nonesuch is packed. The audience enjoys when the King comes out naked and painted in rainbow colors but they do not enjoy when the show ends after about one minute of the King prancing around on all fours.  They are pretty unhappy with the fact that they were gipped but one guy reminds them that they don’t want to look foolish in front of everyone else, so they should get everyone to be fooled, too, before they lynch the duke and the king.  Night number two goes as well as night number one.. But night number three the townspeople are extremely upset and throw a lot of rotten fruit at the duke and the king. But, they end up with $465 dollars from all three nights.  Privately, Jim tells Huck that these men are clearly "rapscallions." Huck responds that all kings are rapscallions—like "Henry the VIII," who used to chop off all his wives' heads.  That night, Jim stays awake during Huck’s watch so Huck can sleep. When Huck wakes up at daybreak, he finds Jim having a mini- breakdown. Jim is homesick for his family and Huck realizes that black people care about their families just like white folks care for their families (pg. 196)

 The king decides he'll just go to the next village and "trust in Providence" to help him find a new con. He and Huck dress themselves up nicely in some new clothes and decide to arrive in town by steamboat, in order to keep up appearances.  They find out that a wealthy man named Peter Wilks has just died.  While he was sick, he had sent for his brothers William (who is deaf and mute) and Harvey (a preacher in England). But they haven't shown up yet, which means they missed the chance to say good-bye to their brother before he died.  Peter's three nieces, however, are still in town… Mary Jane is 19, Susan is 15, and Joanna is 14 and has a cleft palate or “harelip”.  The duke (as William) and king (as Harvey) decide to play the part of the dead man's brothers. They travel to town and act very upset about the fact that Peter died before they arrived.  Watching the two men blubber on and lament their dear, beloved dead "brother," Huck comments that, "it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race" (pg 205).

 Huck tells us that Mary Jane, the 19 year old, is beautiful and red-headed.  Huck thinks it's disgusting the way the duke and king kneel and pray over the dead body and pretend to be distraught. In the will Peter allotted $3,000 and the house to the three nieces, and another three thousand and other property (worth seven grand) to his brothers.  The $6,000 (it ends up being about $400 short) is in the basement and the duke decides it would be better of them to go upstairs and publicly give all $6,000 to the girls.  Everyone is taken with the King’s presentation except for the doctor, named Robinson, who calls the King a fraud and says he has "the worst imitation" of a British accent he's ever heard (pg. 213).  The townspeople side with the cons and Mary Jane gives them back the $6,000 back and says she doesn't want a receipt.

 Everyone has dinner together that night, and Joanna, asks him for information about England, (from where they've all come) and Huck can’t lie convincingly.  Joanna (“harelip”) starts giving Huck a hard time about it and Mary Jane overhears it and yells at Joanna about her lack of manners.  Huck starts to feel guilty about letting the duke and king rob such a nice girl of her money, and he decides that he just can't allow such low-down thievery to take place right under his nose.  Huck then decides he is going to steal the money, hide it, escape, and tell Mary Jane the whole thing by letter once everything has quieted down and the duke and king are out of the picture.  He heads upstairs and starts hunting around the king's room for the money but hears footsteps.  The duke and the king are talking. The duke is nervous and wants to take the cash and split. But the king wants the $10,000 in property. The duke doesn’t love this plan but goes with it.  When the conmen leave, Huck darts out of his hiding place and takes the gold.

 Huck is coming back with the money when he hears more footsteps. He hides the money in the coffin with Peter Wilks (who is laid out in the living room) and hides. Mary Jane comes in crying over her uncle’s body.  The funeral is the next day and Huck is nervous because he thinks the money is going to be discovered. Instead, the undertaker nails the coffin shut with the money inside.  The king declares that he needs to go back to England because his church is in desperate need of their preacher. On account of his hurried departure, he has to start selling off the property right away, including the girls' house, since according to the plan, they're coming with their two uncles back to England.  The king also sells off the girls' slaves without consideration for keeping the black families together. Everybody is upset about this turn of events and is crying because of the loss. Huck consoles himself with the fact that they will all be together soon.  The next day, the day of the planned property auction, the king and the duke wake Huck up and interrogate him. They're missing their gold, and they're trying to figure out if he's the one that stole it. Huck obviously denies the charge but he does say that he saw the black slaves go into the king's room, implying they stole it and they are no longer here to confirm or deny.

 Mary Jane is upset about the slaves being sold because families were broken up and, because of her misery (and beauty) Huck decides to “tell” her everything.  Huck writes a note about the money being buried in the coffin, and tells her not to look at the paper until she's already on the road to Mrs. Lothrop's.  Also, Huck tells her that someone else's life hangs in the balance here (which we know is Jim), so he needs time to escape before the situation plays out.  Later that night, Mary is going to come back to the house and shine a candle in the window. If Huck doesn't show up, he's escaped, and she can everybody about the two frauds.  Huck feels confident about his plan.. and then two real brothers of the dead Peter Wilks show up.

 The duke and the insist the newcomers are the frauds and the townspeople, now thoroughly disgruntled and confused, can't tell who to trust.  In the meantime, they want the king and the duke to hand over the money but, of course, they don’t have it. Nobody believes that the slaves took it so the duke and king look very suspicious.  But the real Harvey says that he has a way to figure out who is the real pair of brothers and asks about the tattoo that Peter had on his chest.  The king says that it is a thin, blue arrow. The real Harvey says that it was actually Peter's initials (P-B-W). But, the guys who buried the body don't remembering seeing a tattoo, so they have to dig up the body.  Of course, the first thing they find when they open the coffin is the bag of gold. Huck runs away as fast as he can. While he's sprinting by the house, he sees the light in the window, which means Mary Jane is home and can soon clear up matters.  He makes it to the raft, where Jim has been all the while and Huck is glad that they lost the Duke and the King...  But before they can leave, the duke and the king get on board.

 Huck makes up a story to explain his running away so the duke and king won't think he was trying to betray them.  Naturally, the duke and the king turn on each other about the gold, each thinking that his partner was trying to make off with the cash.  The duke starts strangling the king, so the king "confesses" to stealing and hiding the cash. Then they get drunk together and pass out in the raft's wigwam, with all forgotten and forgiven in a haze of booze.  Huck tells Jim the whole story.

 Southern folks are illiterate, violent, and driven to mob mentality.  Alcohol is a terrible influence on people.  People in mobs are stupid, cowardly, deaf, dumb, and lose their reason.  Religious mobs count in this criticism. People in religious mobs are dumb and deaf, but also gullible.  Huck starts to realize how awful people can be to one another.  We, as an audience, start to realize that Jim is the only good person in our novel- he is the only one who gets no enjoyment out of the scams and is longing for home and his family.