| abstract | - 12 year-old Huckleberry Finn is a half-literate son of a drunk, one night, his father arrives and Huck is taken away to his father's home. Jealous of Huck's money being kept away, Huck's dad attacks Huck, but eventually passes out from exhaustion. Huck fakes his own death and runs away. He is accompanied by Jim, a slave who worked for Huck's foster family, and escaped the family out of fear for being sold off. The duo follow the Mississippi River to Cairo, Illinois, so Jim can escape to freedom without being arrested. They come across a wanted poster for Jim, falsely saying that he murdered Huck. Jim and Huck come across a sinking barge one night, and Jim notices Huck's father's corpse on the ship. Huck notices two sailors leaving one to drown in a room as the water comes crashing through. Huck and Jim's canoe sinks, but they steal another one, as the barge completely sinks underwater. The canoe is struck by a steamboat, and Huck is at first captured by a few men, then taken to the home of the Graingerford family. Huck lies about his life to the Graingerfords to avoid suspicion. The Graingerfords are in a feud with another family, the Shepherdsons. Huck even befriends Billy Graingerford, the Graingerford patriarch's son, but is horrified that Jim is found by the family and has become a slave. Billy's older sister Sophie runs away to marry a Shepherdson, thus a short firefight happens, killing all the male Graingerfords in the process, including Billy. Jim and Huck find themselves past Cairo, and two con men: The Duke and The King, join Huck and Jim. The quartet land at Phelps Landing, and The King and The Duke impersonate British members of the Wilks family to con 3 sisters, Mary Jane, Julia, and Susan out of their fortune. Meanwhile, Jim has been taken to prison for Huck's murder, and tells Huck about his dead father, thus Huck rebukes Jim. Huck puts the money in the coffin of a recently-deceased family member. He exposes The King and The Duke as con men to Mary Jane, and tells her to tell the town at 10:00, when a scheduled steamboat to Cairo departs. Dr. Robinson doesn't trust The King and The Duke's scheme, and the real members of the family, whom The King and The Duke were impersonating, show up. The town dig up the buried coffin where the money was put, and thus tar and feather The Duke and The King, and become an angry mob. Huck breaks Jim out of prison, but are spotted by the mob in the process. While escaping, Huck is shot in the back by a man. Jim decides to sacrifice his chance to escape to freedom, and carries Huck to the mob, allowing himself to be hanged. Before the mob can hang Jim, however, Mary Jane, Julia, and Susan arrive and stop the hanging from happening. The mob sets Jim free, and Huck passes out. Huck wakes up in the Wilks homestead, and learns that one of Huck's caretakers died, setting Jim free in her will. The other caretaker plans on civilizing Huck, but Huck, narrating the story, says, "I've been there before." The film ends with Huck running off into the sunset.
- Huckleberry Finn was a book written by Mark Twain. It was one of several works taken by Theodore Roosevelt on safari in British East Africa.
- Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain, who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (set around 1845) and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (set around 1835–1845, although taking place after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). He is 12 or 13 years old during the former and a year older ("thirteen or fourteen or along there," Chapter 17) at the time of the latter. Huck also narrates Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, two shorter sequels to the first two books. "Huck" is the son of the town's vagrant drunkard, "Pap" Finn. Sleeping on doorsteps when the weather is fair, in empty hogsheads during storms, and living off of what he receives from others, Huck lives the life of a destitute vagabond. The author metaphorically names him "the juvenile pariah of the village" and describes Huck as "idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad," qualities for which he was admired by all the children in the village, although their mothers "cordially hated and dreaded" him. Huck is an archetypal innocent, able to discover the "right" thing to do despite the prevailing theology and prejudiced mentality of the South of that era. The best example of this is his decision to help Jim escape slavery, even though he believes he will go to hell for it. His appearance is described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wears the clothes of full-grown men which he probably received as charity, and as Twain describes him, "he was fluttering with rags." He has a torn broken hat and his trousers are supported with only one suspender. Tom's Aunt Polly calls Huck a "poor motherless thing." Huck confesses to Tom in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that he remembers his mother and his parents' relentless fighting that only abated with her death. Huck has a carefree life free from societal norms or rules, stealing watermelons and chickens and "borrowing" boats and cigars. Due to his unconventional childhood, Huck has received almost no education. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglas, who sends him to school in return for his saving her life. In the course of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we find that he has learned enough to be literate and even reads books for entertainment when there isn't anything else to do. His knowledge of history as related to Jim is wildly inaccurate, but it is uncertain if he is being wrong on purpose as a joke on Jim. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Widow attempts to "sivilize" the newly wealthy Huck. Huck's father takes him from her, but Huck manages to fake his own death and escape to Jackson's Island, where he coincidentally meets up with Jim, a slave who was owned by the Widow Douglas' sister, Miss Watson. Jim is running away because he overheard Miss Watson planning to "sell him South" for eight hundred dollars. Jim wants to escape to Ohio, where he can find work to eventually buy his family's freedom. Huck and Jim take a raft down the Mississippi River in hopes of finding freedom from slavery for Jim and freedom from Pap for Huck. Their adventures together, along with Huck's solo adventures, comprise the core of the book. In the end, however, Jim gains his freedom through Miss Watson's death, as she freed him in her will. Pap, it is revealed, has died in Huck's absence, and although he could safely return to St. Petersburg, Huck plans to flee west to Indian Territory. In Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, however, Huck is living in St. Petersburg again after the events of his eponymous novel. In Abroad, Huck joins Tom and Jim for a wild, fanciful balloon ride that takes them overseas. In Detective, which occurs about a year after the events of Huck Finn, Huck helps Tom solve a murder mystery.
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