This article will provide a chapter-by-chapter summary of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Though considered a children’s book, Twain’s novel is exceedingly dark. It certainly includes some lighter episodes, but it also deals head-on with child abuse and the racial trauma at the heart of America. A classic bildungsroman, Huck’s coming-of-age story is at turns violent, joyous, and (one must admit) cliche. Let’s launch into our The Adventures of Huck Finn summary.
All quotes are from Project Gutenberg’s searchable The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Click here for Analysis of Quotes from Huck Finn.
Part One – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Summary
Chapter 1
Chapter one introduces Huckleberry Finn. The chapter starts off with Huck talking about The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, written by Mr. Mark Twain. Of the book, Huck admits that it, “was mostly a true book, with some stretchers.” Fresh off his adventures with Tom, Huck brings the reader up to date.
After Tom and Huck found the robbers’ gold, Huck was taken in by the widow Douglas, who tries to “civilize him.” Huck does not take kindly to her efforts – her prohibition on smoking is especially irksome. Both the widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, try to teach Huck about religion, though Huck has no interest.
One night, when Huck is feeling especially lonely, he hears a “Mee-ow!” outside his window. He responds in kind, climbs out the window, and finds Tom Sawyer waiting for him.
Chapter 2 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Tom and Huck sneak away to start a robber band. On their way out, they’re almost caught by Jim, one of the men enslaved to Miss Watson. They sneak into a cave where the other boys are waiting. They talk about the rules for their gang and sign an oath in blood. Huck makes it back to his room just before dawn.
Chapter 3
Huck gets word that his dad has been found drowned in the river. For a while, Huck is glad – his father used to beat him – but he gets it into his head that his father’s not actually dead and is worried again.
Tom Sawyer’s gang goes defunct. Though Tom keeps talking about robbing stagecoaches for their gold and jewels, all they manage to do is steal a few turnips and a pig or two. When Tom talks about robbing Spanish merchants and elephants, Huck goes along, but only sees a Sunday school picnic. Huck asks Tom where the elephants and soldiers were and Tom says a magician made them look like a Sunday school picnic. Disappointed, Huck realizes that Tom is just making things up.
Chapter 4 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
By the time winter comes, Huck has started to get used to life with the widow Douglas. One day, Huck sees some boot tracks in the snow in front of the house. He notices a cross scratched into the left boot heel and knows they’re his father’s tracks. Huck goes directly to Judge Thatcher and “sells” him his fortune. Still worried about his dad, Huck gets Jim to ask his magic hair-ball what his father was planning. After some back and forth, the hairball declares some generalities, but tells Huck to beware of water. When Huck returns to his room at Widow Douglas’ house, his father is there.
Chapter 5
Huck’s dad is a drunkard and a bully. He berates Huck and demands he give him all his money. As Huck has “sold” his fortune to Judge Thatcher, Huck’s dad can’t get access to it. The widow tries to get custody of Huck, but there’s a new judge in town who doesn’t know Huck’s dad and doesn’t want to break up a family.
The new judge has Huck’s dad over for dinner to try to rehabilitate him. The judge and his wife clean him up and talk to him about temperance. Though Huck’s dad claims he’s a new man, he sneaks out that same night, gets drunk, breaks both his arms and almost freezes to death.
Part Two – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Chapter 6
With his dad trying to get his fortune, Huck goes to school and tries to keep a low profile. One day in the spring, Huck’s dad snatches Huck and spirits him away to a secret cabin in the woods. He keeps Huck locked up when he’s not there, so Huck can’t escape. Though Huck likes the pace of this life – no books, no church, no bathing – his dad’s drunken abuse gets worse and Huck makes plans to escape.
Chapter 7
It’s June, and the river is rising, bringing all sorts of (saleable) driftwood downstream. In a stroke of good luck, Huck sees a canoe on the river and grabs it. When Huck and his dad collect enough wood to be worth a trip to the mill, Huck’s dad sets off to town to sell it. Huck decides it’s time to escape. He takes everything he can from the cabin, loads it into his canoe, and makes it look like a robber broke in and killed him. As he launches his canoe, he hears his dad returning. Huck makes it to Jackson’s Island, a few miles down the river.
Chapter 8 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Huck hears boats on the water searching for his body. Once they leave, Huck waits three days before he starts exploring the island. Near the end of the island, he comes upon the remains of a recent campfire. He runs back to his one camp and hides in case he has been seen. After a few hours, he makes his way back to the campsite and sees Jim, who’s recently escaped from Miss Watson. Jim tells Huck the story of his escape and Huck promises not to tell anyone.
Chapter 9
Jim and Huck find a large cave on the island and bring all their belongings there. The river continues to rise and Huck and Jim keep an eye out for anything of value coming down the river. One day, they see a two-story frame house floating down the river. In it they find a man shot in the back. They go through the house and take everything they can. With their canoe full, they make it back to their cave.
Chapter 10 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
While in the cave, Jim gets bit by a snake. Though he gets better in a few days, Huck feels guilty because he thinks it was his fault. (Even though Jim told him it was bad luck, Huck touched some snakeskin a few days previous.)
After Jim recovers, Huck starts to get bored and wants to go to town. Jim suggests Huck dress up like a girl so no one recognizes him. They alter one of the dresses they found in the floating house and Huck crosses into town. He comes to the home of a woman he doesn’t know and knocks on the door.
Part Three – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Chapter 11
The woman welcomes Huck and offers him a place to stay for the night. Huck steers the conversation to his “death.” When she mentions that people think Jim killed Huck, Huck realizes that they’re in trouble. She then says that her husband saw smoke coming from the island (where Huck and Jim are living) and that her husband is going over to the island at midnight.
When she tells Huck she knows he’s not a girl, Huck makes up a story about being a young farmhand looking for his uncle in Goshen. She gives him some food and Huck gets back to the island as quickly as possible. He wakes JIm and they leave immediately on the raft.
Chapter 12 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Jim and Huck continue down stream, traveling mostly by night to avoid detection. Five nights past St. Louis, they come across a steamboat that’s run aground on a rock. Against Jim’s better judgment, they tie their raft to the steamboat and go aboard. Once on the boat, Huck hears two criminals scheming to kill a third. When Huck manages to find Jim, Jim tells him the raft has floated away.
Chapter 13
After recovering from his shock, Huck helps Jim find the criminals’ skiff. Once they find it, they cut it loose and float down the river in search of their raft. Huck feels bad about leaving the criminals to drown on the steamboat, so he finds a ferryboat and tells the captain that there are people on the steamboat that need saving. As Huck makes his way back to Jim and the skiff, he sees the steamboat float by (with no survivors). He finds Jim, they sink the skiff, and sleep.
Chapter 14 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Huck and Jim go through the loot the criminals had stowed in the skiff. They find books, blankets, clothes, cigars, and all manner of things. They spend the day relaxing and talking about the kings that Huck is reading about. Jim talks about King Solomon and Huck tells Jim about “the dolphin,” erstwhile heir to the French throne.
Chapter 15
When fog starts to roll in, Huck takes the canoe with a line to tie the raft to the bank. The current pulls the raft away and Huck and Jim are separated for hours. When the fog clears, Huck finds the raft and climbs aboard. He finds Jim asleep on deck and convinces him that the fog was just a dream. Jim is convinced but eventually realizes that Huck has lied to him. He’s hurt by Huck’s trickery and Huck apologizes.
Chapter 16 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Jim and Huck’s plan has always been to make it to Cairo, Illinois. From there, they’ll take a steamboat back up the Ohio River to the free states. Once it becomes clear that they’re close to Cairo, Huck starts to feel bad that he’s helped Jim escape. Huck tells Jim he’ll go ashore and see how close Cairo is, but his plan is to turn Jim in.
As he paddles for shore, two men appear and ask Huck if there are any runaway slaves on his boat. Thinking fast, Huck tells them his family is on the boat and that they have smallpox. The men leave them alone and Huck returns to the boat, disappointed that he didn’t manage to turn Jim in.
Jim and Huck begin to think that they passed Cairo in the fog a few nights before. The only solution is to use the canoe to go back upriver. Unfortunately, their canoe has disappeared. They decide to set out down the river in the hopes of buying another canoe. That night, in poor visibility, a steamboat hits and damages their raft. Huck surfaces but can’t Jim. He makes it to shore, finds a log cabin, and is quickly surrounded by dogs. Frozen to the spot, he waits for the owner to emerge.
Chapter 17
After making sure that he’s not a Shephardson, Huck is allowed to enter the Grangerford home. Huck tells them his name is George Jackson and that he fell off the steamboat. The Grangerfords tell Huck he can stay as long as he likes. Their son Buck is especially fond of Huck. They tell Huck about their daughter Emmeline, who died a few years before. She drew pictures and wrote poetry, both of which Huck thinks are amazing.
Chapter 18 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Unbeknownst to Huck, the Grangerfords are in a feud with the Shephardsons. One Sunday, after church, Sophia Grangerford asks Huck to go back to the church to fetch her bible – she forgot it. Huck is suspicious. Once he gets to the church, he sees the bible and finds a scrap of paper in it that says “Half-Past Two.” He returns the bible to Sophia and pretends he’s not able to read the note.
The next day, one of the enslaved men brings Huck down to the river. Huck is shocked to see Jim. It turns out that Jim survived the crash and managed to salvage their raft. The next day, Huck wakes early and notices that Buck is gone and the house is very quiet. When he asks what’s going on, he’s told that Sophia Gragerford has run off with a Shephardson. Huck races to find Buck – he finds him in a gun battle with some Shephardsons. Buck is shot and killed.
Sick of the violence he’s seen, Huck makes for the raft and Jim. He arrives just as Jim is about to leave.
Chapter 19 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Huck and Jim continue to make their way down the river. When Huck spies a canoe on the bank, he grabs it. As he’s paddling back to the raft, two men appear out of the bushes and beg Huck to save them – they’re being chased by men and dogs.
Huck gets them both back to the raft. It turns out they’re both hucksters – sham doctors, preachers, actors – and have both been chased out of towns close by. Within a few hours, one of them claims to be a duke and the other claims to the “le Dauphin” – erstwhile king of France. Though Huck knows better, he keeps quiet to keep the peace.
Chapter 20
The duke and the king plot ways to make money. Eventually, they go ashore to look around. The king goes to a revival meeting, pretends to be a reformed pirate, and takes up a collection. The duke goes to a printing office, sets up a fake newspaper, and convinces farmers to buy ads in it. The duke also prints out a “Runaway Slave” pamphlet that describes Jim. That way, if anyone stops them, they can pretend to be transporting Jim back to his owners in New Orleans.
Part Five – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Chapter 21
The king and the duke decide to rehearse and produce some Shakespeare scenes at the next town they pass. When they arrive at the next town, Huck, the duke, and the king go ashore to put up some playbills. Their mission is interrupted by some local drama. A man named Boggs rides into town for his “monthly drunk.” He threatens everyone he sees, but is focussed on a man named Colonel Sherburn. After a while, Sherburn comes out of his store and tells Boggs that he can say anything he wants until one o’clock, but if he says one word about him after one o’clock, he’ll kill him. Being as drunk as he is, Boggs can’t be controlled. He keeps insulting Sherburn, and Sherburn, true to his word, shoots Boggs in the street.
Chapter 22
A lynch-mob forms and goes to Sherburn’s house. Sherburn steps onto his roof with a gun and calls the mob cowards. The mob disperses quietly. Later, Huck goes to the circus where he sees trick-riders and clowns. That night, the king and the duke perform their play to a paltry dozen people. Frustrated, the duke adds the following line to the playbill, “Ladies and children not admitted.”
Chapter 23 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
The hall is packed for the next performance. The duke comes onto the stage and talks up the genius of Shakespeare. When the curtain rises, the king comes out, naked and painted with stripes. The crowd loves it, but when the show ends suddenly, the audience feels like they’ve been cheated and mocked. Instead of storming the stage, the audience decides to talk up the show so that everyone in the town is in the same position. On the third night, it’s clear that everyone in the audience has brought something rotten to throw at the performers. However, the king and duke knew what was going to happen and manage to escape to the raft.
Huck finally gets Jim to talk about his family. Jim tells Huck about when one of his daughters contracted scarlet fever. Though she recovers, she loses her hearing. Before he realized that she’s deaf, Jim slapped her for not doing what he asked her to do.
Chapter 24 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
As they continue down the river, the king and the duke think about their next con. When they arrive at the next town, the king happens upon a man who tells him about a rich man that recently died. Though the townspeople sent for the man’s brothers, they haven’t arrived yet. The king and the duke decide to impersonate the brothers and try to get the dead man’s inheritance. For the first time, Huck is disgusted with their actions.
Chapter 25
The king and the duke manage to convince the entire town that they are the dead man’s brothers. Only one man – the doctor – sees through their charade. He warns the dead man’s daughters, but no one believes him.
Part Six – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Chapter 26
After talking to the sister of the dead man, Huck starts to have second thoughts about stealing from them. He decides to steal the money from the king and the duke and somehow get it back to the girls. Huck sneaks into the king and duke’s room and finds out where they’ve hidden the gold. When they leave, he takes it and goes back to his bed.
Chapter 27
Huck sneaks downstairs with the gold. When he hears someone behind him, he shoves the gold into the coffin and hides. The next day, during the funeral, the undertaker screws the coffin closed, money and all. The king and the duke waste no time selling all of the family’s assets. When the king and the duke find the money missing, they interrogate Huck, who blames some of the enslaved people (who have just been sold off).
Chapter 28 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Huck’s conscience finally gets to him – he tells Mary Jane about the whole plot. She’s enraged, but Huck convinces her to go to a family friend’s house to give him time to get away. Meanwhile, as the king and duke are auctioning off the household goods, the real brothers from England show up.
Chapter 29
With the arrival of the two brothers, the town is in an uproar. They bring all four men (and Huck) to the tavern and question them. After handwriting samples are inconclusive, one of the real brothers asks the king if he knows what was tattooed on the deceased’s chest. When the king doesn’t know (the real brother says it’s “P—B—W”), they ask the men who laid the body out for burial. Neither of them remember seeing any tattoo at all. At this news, the lawyer suggests they dig up the body.
When they manage to open the coffin, they see the bag of gold that Huck stowed there. In the excitement, Huck runs as fast as he can to Jim and the raft. Huck is thrilled and they push off in the river. Unfortunately, just as he thinks they’re free of the king and the duke, he sees them rowing out to the raft. Huck nearly cries.
Chapter 30 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
When they get to the raft, the king and the duke immediately start to argue over what went wrong. When one accuses the other of secretly hiding the gold in the coffin to dig it up later, they nearly come to blows. Eventually, they calm down and start drinking. Huck tells Jim everything.
Part Seven – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Chapter 31
When the king and the duke can’t manage to get any cons going, they soon go broke. They start whispering on the raft, which makes Jim and Huck nervous. The king goes ashore to see if he can’t rustle up some cash, but when Huck and the duke follow a few hours later, they find him drunk in a bar. Huck takes this chance to run back to the raft and escape with Jim, but when he gets to the raft, Jim is gone.
When Huck asks a man on the road if he’s seen anyone resembling Jim, he tells Huck that an old man (the king) ratted Jim out for forty dollars. Huck goes back to the raft and thinks about how to save Jim. At first, the only solution he can’t think of is to write to Miss Watson and tell her where Jim is so she can claim him. But then Huck thinks about how kind Jim has been and about everything Jim has done for him. Huck resolves to save Jim himself.
He walks toward the town and the first person he sees is the duke putting up playbills. Huck pretends he doesn’t know what’s happened to Jim. Worried that Huck might rat them out, the duke tells Huck that Jim was sold to a man forty miles inland. Huck plays along, walks away, then circles back to where he knows Jim is actually being held.
Chapter 32 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
When Huck gets to the Phelps’ farm where Jim is being kept, he’s immediately welcomed by Aunt Sally, who thinks Huck’s a cousin who was supposed to arrive via steamboat. Huck plays along. As Aunt Sally pumps him for information about the family, Huck starts to get nervous. Luckily, Aunt Sally sees Mr. Phelps coming down the road and she gets Huck to hide to surprise him. When Mr. Phelps arrives, Huck finds out who they think he is — Tom Sawyer. So as to give him a chance to intercept the real Tom Sawyer, Huck claims he needs to go get his luggage from the dock.
Chapter 33
Huck runs into Tom Sawyer on the road. Tom thinks Huck is a ghost. After explaining the situation to him, Tom agrees to help Huck free Jim. They both go back to the Phelps’ house (Tom pretends to be Sid Sawyer). After bed, they sneak out. On the way to town, they see that the duke and the king have been tarred and feathered by the townspeople.
Chapter 34 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Tom and Huck start planning Jim’s escape. They check out where he’s being held on the farm, befriend one of the other enslaved men, and manage to visit Jim. While Huck wants to break Jim out simply, Tom wants to make it as complicated as possible.
Chapter 35
Tom is full of ideas as to how they can make the escape as dramatic as possible. Huck doesn’t understand why it’s necessary to make things so complicated, but Tom insists.
Part Eight – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Chapter 36
Huck and Tom start trying to help Jim escape with Tom’s co*ckamamie plans, but they only arouse suspicion (and attract the attention of the farm’s hound-dogs).
Chapter 37 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Tom and Huck’s hijinks continue. To cover up for the disappearance of a sheet and a shirt (for a rope-ladder), Tom and Huck make Aunt Sally think she’s crazy. They finally manage to bake the rope ladder into a pie and slip it to Jim.
Chapter 38 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Tom insists that Jim’s escape go according to the adventure novels he’s read. They try to come up with a coat of arms for Jim to scratch into the wall of the shed. At one point, Jim has to come out of his shed (in effect, escaping) to help Tom and Huck move something. While Tom wants there to be rats and/or rattlesnakes in Jim’s shed, Jim won’t have it. He does, however, agree to try to water a flower with his tears.
Chapter 39
In pursuit of the most dramatic escape, Huck and Jim catch some rats and snakes to put in Jim’s shed. Before they can bring them to the shed, they escape into the house and drive Aunt Sally crazy. With all the preparations nearly complete, Tom has Huck write letters of warning (in blood) to the Phelps family. These letters make the family very anxious.
Chapter 40 – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
The night of the escape, Huck is surprised to find fifteen men gathered in the Phelps house. The Phelps family have taken the warning letters seriously – everyone is armed. Huck manages to talk his way out of Aunt Sally’s suspicions, and he and Tom go to Jim’s shed. All three of them escape out the hole they’ve dug and try to make their way to the raft.
All is going well until Tom’s pants catch on a fence. As he pulls away, one of the men hears the sound and starts shooting. They make it back to the raft, but Tom has been shot in the calf. Tom wants them to push off in spite of his injury, but Jim and Huck refuse to leave before they get Tom to a doctor.
Chapter 41 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
Huck goes to a doctor, brings him to the river, and tells him where the raft is. Instead of going with the doctor, Huck lays down to sleep. When he wakes, it’s already light – he runs back to the doctor’s office but the doctor hasn’t returned yet. Huck starts to run for the raft, but runs into Uncle Silas, who takes him back to the Phelps’ house.
The house is full of farmers and their families, all talking about the events of the previous night. Tom doesn’t show up all day – when Aunt Sally puts Huck to bed, she asks him not to go back out.
Chapter 42
The doctor finally brings Tom back to the house on a stretcher. The doctor praises Jim for helping him take care of Tom. When Tom wakes, he tells Aunt Sally the whole story. At the end of the story, Aunt Sally tells Tom that Jim is under lock and key again. Tom is incensed. He sits bolt upright and tells Aunt Sally and Huck that Miss Watson died two months previously and set Jim free in her will.
Just then, Tom’s Aunt Polly shows up and the whole charade collapses. It turns out that Tom has been taking letters from the post office before they can get to Aunt Sally.
Chapter The Last – The Adventures of Huck Finn Summary
Jim is a free man and grateful to Tom and Huck. When Huck says he’s afraid of his father, Tom tells him that his father is dead. Huck tells the reader he’ll go out to “Indian Territory” to have more adventures – he can’t stand to be civilized.
Wrapping Up – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Summary
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering how anyone could consider Twain’s novel a children’s book. In some ways, like its protagonist, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is stuck between the lightness of childhood and the violence of adulthood. Though certainly a classic of American literature (and one of the most taught), Huck Finn can’t help but vacillate between Sawyeresque comedy and Finnean ethical engagement.
If you’ve found this article useful or interesting, you can also check out my summaries and analyses of 1984, The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, The Crucible, Beloved, Frankenstein, and Brave New World.
