Huck Finn Chapters 6-11 summary – Flashcards

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Huck continues to go to school despite the thrashings from his father. With a firm resoluteness he is determined to continue his education, more to spite his father than for any other reason. Pap is waiting around for the court to decide about Huck's money, but it is a slow process. He hangs around the Widow Douglas' house too much, and she threatens to make trouble for him. Angered by her attempts to intimidate him, he decides to kidnap Huck and head for the Illinois side of the river in a skiff. They settle in an old abandoned cabin where he keeps Huck locked up when he goes into town for supplies. In spite of all this, living in the woods is relaxing and easy for Huck, and he wonders why he had ever liked the civilized life at the widow's. Pap sometimes locks him in the cabin for days at a time, however, and beats him habitually. One night he gets drunk and chases Huck around the cabin with a knife. When his father threatens to hide him in an even more desolate area, so the widow will never be able to find him, he begins to plan an elaborate scheme of escape by faking his own death. The "June rise" of the river brings with it a canoe loosened from its moorings somewhere upstream. Thinking it might come in handy, Huck quickly hides it in the bushes along the bank. Later Pap finds a log raft floating down the river. He locks Huck in the cabin and promptly goes back into town to sell the logs. Huck then begins his plan of escape. Before Pap has crossed the river, Huck has sawed his way out of the cabin. He loads his canoe with the necessary supplies, then shoots a wild pig, smashes the door with an ax, and scatters the pig's blood around. He covers the ax with hair and blood to make it look as if he had been murdered. He then hides in the canoe until dark. Just as he is leaving, he hears his pap coming back unexpectedly. Staying in the shade of the riverbank, he escapes unnoticed and heads toward Jackson's Island in the middle of the river. He arrives just before breakfast.

Twain's characterization of Pap in these chapters is a sad commentary on a society that would grant custody of a child to such a father. After his father's drunken harangue in the middle of the night, and his earlier threat to hide him in an even more remote area, Huck decides he must escape to save his life. He prefers the freedom of the woods to living in the civilized manner of the Widow Douglas. His freedom is, however, tainted by his father's frightening behavior. He wants to leave, but he is sure he does not want to go back to the widow. Consequently, his plan of escape must convince them both that he is dead. He plans each step with intricate detail. He wishes Tom Sawyer were there to throw in the "fancy touches," but Tom's romantic plan, based on the books he had read, would probably have failed, as it did in the raid on the Sunday school picnic. Here again, Twain is satirizing Tom's false romantic notions. Huck is practical and down-to-earth, and Twain endorses his actions by portraying him as a survivor.

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Huck has a comfortable feeling as he wakes up on Jackson's Island the next morning. Too lazy to get up and cook breakfast, he watches the sun filter through the tall trees, spotting the ground with "freckled places." His peace is soon interrupted, however, with the loud "boom" of the cannon being fired from a ferryboat loaded with prominent townspeople who are looking for his murdered body. The cannon is fired over the water periodically to make Huck's supposed dead body come to the surface. Since he has had no breakfast, he is getting hungry, but he does not dare risk starting a fire because he is afraid they will see the smoke. He suddenly remembers that loaves of bread, filled with quicksilver, are also used to locate drowned bodies. Snagging one of the loaves with a stick, he removes the quicksilver and eats the bread for breakfast. The ferryboat skirts the shore of the island, sounding the cannon occasionally, while its passengers look for Huck's washed-up body. After an uneventful search, the boat finally leaves. Three days pass and Huck gets lonely. He decides to explore the three-mile-long island. He feels satisfied that the different types of berries and green summer grapes that he finds will come in handy, but he is suddenly startled by the ashes of a campfire that is still smoking. Terrified, he runs back to his camp, hides his possessions in his canoe, and climbs a tree. After two hours he decides to come down and paddle to the Illinois side of the river, but after arriving he soon hears the voices of other campers. Afraid they will spot him, he goes back to the island. After a fearful, sleepless night, he resolves to find out who is on the island with him. When he discovers the spot where he had seen the ashes, he notices a tall man wrapped in a blanket still sleeping. Hiding in the bushes, Huck waits and soon realizes it is Miss Watson's slave, Jim. Relieved and happy, Huck jumps out, startling Jim, who thinks that he is seeing Huck's ghost. Huck convinces him that he is, indeed, very much alive; he tells Jim the story of his escape. Jim, in turn, also confesses that he has "run off." Huck promises not to tell, in spite of the fact that people will call him a "low-down Abolitionist." Jim explains that he had seen slave traders in the area and overheard Miss Watson say she was tempted to sell him down the river for eight hundred dollars. Huck and Jim move their belongings into a cave in a high bluff that Huck had found earlier while he was exploring the island. Here they are sheltered from thunderstorms and hidden from people who might happen to come to the island. The move seems to come just in time, for it begins to rain and the river continues to rise for ten or twelve days, flooding the low spot where Huck's camp had been before. They explore the island in their canoe, and one night they find a large raft that has floated down in the rising waters. Another night a two-story frame house floats by. They climb into the top story and find many useful items. As they are rummaging around, they run into a dead man who has been shot in the back. Jim covers him with old rags and asks Huck not to look at his ghastly face. They load their new-found possessions into the canoe and head back to the island.

The playful, relaxed tone at the beginning of Chapter 8 is set in juxtaposition to the preceding chapter where Huck frantically escapes from the clutches of his abusive father. It is noteworthy that he does not, however, run into the waiting arms of the Widow Douglas. Twain's theme of individual freedom is apparent in the contrast of the natural life on the island where Huck is "comfortable and satisfied," to the respectable, hypocritical life on the shore where he faces the tyranny of his father and the Widow Douglas. Although the island offers peace and freedom, by the same token it is also the agent of loneliness and fear. This is true when Huck cannot sleep for fear of the dangers that might be connected to the smoking campfire he has discovered. He has left behind all of society, but now he is lonely. The island and the river, symbolic of freedom, are also subjected to dangerous river currents and treacherous storms, but it is at those times that Huck's language is at its most artistic level. "And here would come a blast of wind . . . and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest—fst! it was as bright as glory . . . and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down-stairs." This poetic description of a frightening thunderstorm is followed by his words to Jim. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here." To Huck the constraints of society are missing on the island and that is all that matters. Huck quickly makes his decision to help Jim escape from slavery even though people would call him a "low-down Abolitionist." Throughout the novel, Huck encounters this moral dilemma several times. The choice between the hypocritical values of society and Huck's friendship with Jim is the central conflict of the novel. This is also where Twain employs his most biting satire. One example is the comment Jim makes about being poor. He decides that he is not poor now because he owns himself, and he is worth eight hundred dollars. Superstition is shown as pervading the society of Huck's day. Shooting cannons to bring a dead body to the surface seems the ultimate satiric treatment of the theme of superstition, particularly since the participants are the educated townspeople. Ironically, the floating bread on the water finds Huck as it was meant to do. Similarly, the house that floated down with the floodwaters of the river supplied Huck and Jim with many items for their survival on the island.

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Mrs. Judith Loftus: a lady whom Huck visits in town

The next morning Huck wants to discuss the dead man he and Jim had seen in the two-story frame house, but Jim says talking about it will bring bad luck. Huck argues that touching a snakeskin with his hands was supposed to have brought bad luck too, but to the contrary they have found all those useful items in the floating house and eight dollars besides. They have, in his opinion, had nothing but good luck. Jim's predictions come true, however, when a rattlesnake bites him that evening. Huck plays a joke on Jim by putting a dead rattlesnake in his blanket. When Jim goes to bed, the snake's mate is curling around the dead snake and bites Jim in the heel. Jim's leg is swollen for four days, and Pap's whiskey comes in handy for the pain. Huck is getting bored on the island and decides to go into town to see what is happening. Jim likes the idea but cautions him to go at night so he will not be seen. He suggests that Huck disguise himself as a girl. Thinking it is a good idea, Huck dresses in the calico gown and sunbonnet they had found earlier in the floating house. Trying hard to concentrate on being a girl, Huck paddles to town in his canoe and finds the house of a woman who has been in town only two weeks. Passing as Sarah Williams, he tells her his mother is ill, and he is looking for his uncle's house. She insists it is too dark for a girl to be out alone, and she wants Huck/Sarah to wait so her husband can escort him to his uncle's house. Huck learns the latest gossip as he waits. Although Mrs. Loftus is new in town, she has already heard of Huck's supposed murder and Jim's escape. She tells him that at first people thought it was Pap who murdered Huck, but later, after Jim ran away, he became the murder suspect and there is a three hundred dollar reward offered for Jim. She has seen smoke on Jackson's Island, and her husband is going over after midnight to check out her suspicions that Jim might be hiding on the island. When Huck hears this, he tries to stay calm but suddenly forgets his name is Sarah Williams. When she throws him a ball of lead, he claps his legs together to catch it in his lap. Since girls would spread their legs to catch a ball in their skirt, Mrs. Loftus realizes Huck is a boy. He finally admits it but tells another story about being an orphan who was being abused by his stepfather, so he ran away and decided to live with his uncle. She finally lets him go, telling him to be sure to contact her, Mrs. Judith Loftus, if he needs any help. He quickly heads back to the island, makes a fire in his old campsite, and goes back to the cave. Jim is already asleep. He warns him to get going because "They're after us." Without a word, Jim hurriedly gets to work packing the raft and the canoe. Huck checks to see whether there is a strange boat on the river. When he sees that all is clear they slip away in dead silence.

In Chapter 10 the theme of superstition is again brought out when the rattlesnake bites Jim. Jim thinks his bad luck is attributed to the fact that Huck has touched a snakeskin with his bare hands a few days ago, but Huck knows the real reason. He is aware that he acted irresponsibly when he put the dead rattlesnake in Jim's blanket for a joke. Although it is too late, he remembers that the mate of a dead snake will come later and curl around it. Sorry for what he has done, Huck calls himself a fool and does not tell Jim it is his fault because he knows it would hurt him. In these chapters we begin to see Huck's growing concern for Jim's welfare. When Mrs. Loftus tells Huck that people in town think Jim is Huck's murderer, Huck is shocked. One can almost see his hand clasp over his mouth after his short retort, "Why he—." He hopes Mrs. Loftus has not noticed because he feels he should keep quiet to protect Jim. By contrast, Huck responds with little emotion to the suggestion that "Some think old Finn done it himself." In light of Huck's relationship with his father, the idea does not surprise him. Huck's hurried return to the island and his warning to Jim that "they're after us," shows the close relationship that has already formed between them. In reality they are after Jim but in Huck's close identity with Jim, it never occurs to Huck that he and Jim are not in this together.