Emotions When Huck And Jim Get Away

The part of the story that I chose to close read and reflect upon is the last two paragraphs of chapter 29 in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. The narrator of the story, Huckleberry Finn, wants you to feel the pain and suffering that he had just overcome and how happy, but scared, he was that he just had ran from the king and duke. “Out with you Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we’re shut of them!” This quote shows the amount of excitement and fear coming from Huck as he tells Jim to get the raft untied so they can get away. The end of the quote is interesting however because Huck is so happy to be away from the king and the duke. Twain makes the reader aware of how much of a coward the king and duke are, but Jim is still unaware that they are imposters. For Huck to spill the secret to Jim, Huck must have been very emotionally flustered. However the next part of the story just suggests that Jim was just extremely happy to see Huck that he must not have even registered what Huck had said.

“Jim lit out, and was a coming for me with both arms spread, he was full of joy; but when I glimpsed him in the lightning, my heart shot up in my mouth and I went overboard backwards; for I forgot he was old King Lear and a drownded A-rab all in one…” The beginning of this paragraph suggests the pure excitement of Jim to see Huck when he is coming down to the river’s edge. The other half of the passage suggests the disappointment of Huck because he remembers how they dressed Jim. I feel like at this point in the story Huck realizes that he feels bad for how they have to treat a true friend of his and feels a little bad for him.

Once Jim un-ties the boat and pushes off Huck sighs a sign of relief because they are “free” once again. This goes back before the Huck and Jim met the King and the Duke and how they treated being on the raft, out on the river, much like the Garden of Eden. It was a place that even though Jim was black and Huck was white, they were equally trying to escape to a better place.

Finally, in the last few sentences of the chapter Twain writes, “…but about the third crack, I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well-and held my breath and listened and waited- and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come!” I believe that he did this to instill brief fear into the reader to preface the pain that was about to come. He then finished up the chapter by saying, “So I wilted right down onto the planks, then, and gave up; and it was all I could do from keep from crying.” This ending sentence really startled me because it truly shows Huck’s emotions and how much he wanted to get away from the duke and king. Considering everything that Huck has been through in his life Twain had only depicted Huck to be emotional one other time in the story, after the battle of the Grangerfords and the Shepardsons which was a very traumatic event, so to compare this near crying event to that emotional breakdown shows the mere disgust that Huck had towards the king and the duke.

Works Cited:

Twain, Mark. "Chapter 29." The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Comp. John D. Seelye and Guy Cardwell. New York: Penguin, 2003. 218. Print.