Huck Finn

Huck Finn is a classic book written by Mark Twain. It is about a boy that has lived on his own almost his whole life and is taken in by a woman in his town. There is far more to the story than this though. This is the story of Huck Finn, or at least the short, edited version of it.

Huck Finn is an illiterate boy living in a small shack along the river for basically his whole life. He has a poor background, and his father is the town drunk who doesn't care very much about his son.  Huck's two best friends are Tom Sawyer, an upper-class, well-schooled boy, and Jim, a slave with a lower standing to himself.

 The town's widow decides to take Huck in as her own and school him, but after a few weeks, he decides he has had it and runs away to find his father, hoping he can get him to turn over a new leaf. However, his father refuses to turn over a new leaf and in some sense kidnaps Huck and takes all his money.

 Huck is left in a shack that his father calls home and is locked in. However, since his father is gone for days, Huck finds a hatchet and hacks his way out. He finds an abandoned canoe on the riverbank and hides it. He then uses the hatchet to cut the head off of a pig and leaves a trail of blood into the river so that everyone would think he killed himself. He then takes off down the river in the canoe with the hatchet and some food.

He lands on a small island, prepared to board there for awhile, when he runs into Jim! Jim had run away the same night as Huck because he didn't like the way he was being treated by his mistress. The next day, this causes a fuss in the town making people think that Jim murdered Huck. Huck and Jim decide that they will stick together, and tie together a little raft to go down the river on. They land on another island, and by and by run into two sniveling low down thieves.

 They are called in the book the duke and the king, because at the time Jim and Huck found them, they put on airs about being a long lost king and duke that never inherited their share of family fortune. Naturally, it does not take Huck and Jim long to see through the thieves' disguise, but they decide to go with them to the various towns just to get away from the searches going on for Huck.

By this time, there was a hefty amount being offered for Jim. Anything the thieves tried to make money with, they always failed. No one wanted to come to their cheap shows or anything. Finally, in the middle of the night, the thieves sold Jim to a wealthy family living on a farm. (Now, Jim nor Huck knew this, but this farm was the home of Tom's aunt and uncle, and Tom was due for a visit this week!)

Huck went straight to the house, and pretended to be Tom without actually knowing he was pretending to be Tom. When Tom actually arrived, Huck told him everything that had happened, and how Jim had been captured. Tom agreed that they needed to get Jim out of that house. They devised a plan to dig Jim out and escape with him. Though it took a good few days of hard work, they succeeded in getting him out. They then returned home via their raft.

I enjoyed the story, even though most of the writing was horribly mangled in a way I could barely read. It was what I guess you could expect out of a boy that hadn't had any schooling. I very much enjoyed the book none the less.