Quote 21
And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a n***** a good ways off. (9.21)
Here's something to think about: Huck has a lot more leeway than Jim, because he can lie. But Jim's body always speaks the truth: he's a slave. Jim couldn't lie the way Huck does even if he wanted to.
Quote 22
"They're in an awful peck of trouble, and—"
"WHO is?"
"Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you'd take your ferryboat and go up there—"
"Up where? Where are they?"
"On the wreck." (13.29-33)
Actually, this is a pretty good technique. Huck starts off with something vague—"they're" in "trouble"—and only fills in the details when other people ask. Not that we're giving advice, or anything.
Quote 23
"Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain't seen no fog, nor no islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon I done the same. You couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming." (15.34)
Huck won't lie to his dad, but he has not problem lying to and deceiving Jim. He may not want to send Jim back to slavery, but it doesn't seem like Jim rates quite as highly as a white man in Huck's moral scale.
Quote 24
"Be done, boys! Who's there?"
I says:
It's me."
"Who's me?"
"George Jackson, sir." (17.2-17.6)
Okay, stay with us for some brain-bending thoughts: Huck is only half lying. See, the first thing he says is, "it's me." And it is! It's Huck himself, only Huck is going under the name George Jackson. Is this really a lie?
Quote 25
The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. (1.2)
Yes, it's so awful living in a "regular and decent" house, where all your meals are on time, your laundry's done, and you have your very own basement couch in front of the Xbox. (Or something like that.) Huck isn't having it: eventually, he has to get out into nature again.
Quote 26
She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals (1.3)
Natural: falling on your food before someone or something else gets it. Unnatural: waiting until everyone has been served and prayed over their food. Well, he does have a point. Luckily, most of us don't have to guard our food from other predators at this point.
Quote 27
The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. (1.8)
Notice how Huck hears voices in nature—and not in the creepy, out-of-his-mind way. Nature isn't a big blank to him; he seems to think of these animals as his friends, or at least acquaintances.
Quote 28
At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me. (4.2)
Huck may be more comfortable sleeping in the woods, but he's starting to think that this civilization thing isn't so bad. And what's up with liking the "hiding" ("beating") that he gets for playing hookey? Why does being punished cheer him up?
Quote 29
It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around. (6.4)
Aside from the kidnapping, being down at Pap's isn't so bad. But is this nature? Is this the clean, gentle, sort of spooky woods, or is this just a kind of perverted civilization, like pigs living in their filth in a pigpen?
Quote 30
I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late. You know what I mean—I don't know the words to put it in. (6.22)
Yeah, we don't either. But Huck does. He really gets the natural world; he understands its rhythms, and he can even tell the time by how it smells. (We'd be lost without our watches.)
Quote 31
THE sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o'clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. (8.1)
No waking up and rushing off to school or church here: Huck just waits for the sun to wake him up and then just admires the world around him. Even the squirrels recognize him as a friend—he might as well be one of them.
Quote 32
WHEN I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lone- some and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering—spirits that's been dead ever so many years—and you always think they're talking about YOU. As a general thing it makes a body wish HE was dead, too, and done with it all. (32.1)
Forget the preaching and Sunday School; nature is Huck's church. This about the closest to a religious experience we've seen him have, and we have to admit that it sounds pretty nice. (Check out our "Religion" theme for some more thoughts on this quotation.)
Quote 33
Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things—we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us—the new clothes Buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on clothes, nohow. (19.4)
Well, obviously. If you're going to go floating on a raft down the middle of the Mississippi at night, you might as well be naked. Don't you want the full experience?
Quote 34
Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before. (43.13)
In the end, Huck heads back to nature. Aunt Sally might be nice, but apparently that's not enough to make up for having to go to school and wash his hands. (We have to wonder if he'd make the same choice given the Internet and running water.)
Quote 35
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people. (1.4)
Huck can't figure out why anyone would care about a bunch of long-dead people. (Hey! Ask Shmoop!) For him, religion is about the day-to-day business of living.
Quote 36
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together. (1.7)
Well, when you put it that way, wandering around all day with a harp doesn't sound like much fun at all. You can't blame a thirteen-year-old boy for thinking that Heaven sounds a little dull.
Quote 37
Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. (2.38)
Let's get this straight: murderous band of robbers, sure. Murderous band of robbers on Sundays, no way. It sounds like only some of those Sunday School lessons are sinking in.
Quote 38
Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way. (3.1)
This is one of those fun bits of dramatic irony. We know that you're supposed to pray for things like kindness, grace, forgiveness, and maybe a nice harp waiting for you in Heaven. But no one's bothered to explain this to Huck, so he thinks prayer is kind of like making an Amazon wishlist and waiting for God to click on it.
Quote 39
The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing—and so on. The people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, "It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!" And people would shout out, "Glory!—A-a-MEN!" And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen: (20.30)
Religion… or mass hallucination? This sounds a lot more like a hippie concert than an actual religious experience. Is Twain making fun of all the revivals in the 1830s? Or does he see something good in them?
Quote 40
And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild. (20.32)
"Crazy" and "wild" aren't words we often association with religion. What kind of experience is this? Are the people really getting any religion out of this—or are they just letting off some steam in an era before football games?