This article will provide a selection of important quotes and analysis of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If you’re like me, you might have thought that Huckleberry Finn was a children’s book. Maybe you read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when you were ten and figured that Huck would be the same sort of character. I assure you – this is not the case. Huck Finn is a heart-felt book full of racial trauma, violence, and child abuse that deserves to be read and re-read (Scroll down for Huck Finn quotes and analysis) Here’s a full, chapter-by-chapter summary of Huck Finn if you need it.
All quotes are from Project Gutenberg’s searchable The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Quotes and Analysis of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”
This quote at the beginning of the book is interesting not for the content of what it says, but rather for the narrative voice it establishes. Most importantly, this quote presents Huck Finn as the first-person narrator. Huck will use this position to provide significant commentary on the story. For example, when Huck’s friend Buck Grangerford gets shot in chapter eighteen, Huck says of “I ain’t ever going to get shut of them [memories]—lots of times I dream about them.”
Mark Twain Huck Finn Quotes (Continued)
The second significant thing about this quote is the relationship it presents between this text and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. As a much more traditional novel in the third-person, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer doesn’t ever provide the intimacy and self-realization present in Huck’s first-person narration.
“So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies.”
For the first three chapters, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more or less an extension of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom convinces Huck to join his gang and rob “Spaniards and Arabs.” To Huck’s great disappointment, Tom’s adventures are completely imaginary. In this moment, Tom functions as a representation of a naive childhood idyll.
In chapter four, Tom’s childish adventures are juxtaposed with Huck’s violent reality. When Huck’s father starts hanging around town, Huck “sells” his share of the fortune he and Tom found so that his abusive father can’t come and take it from him. While Tom Sawyer is talking about imaginary adventures, Huck is figuring how to deal with his father’s drunken abuse. That brings us to our next Huck Finn Quote:
“And looky here—you drop that school, you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better’n what HE is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn’t read, and she couldn’t write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn’t before THEY died. I can’t; and here you’re a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain’t the man to stand it—you hear?”
When Huck comes back to his room, his father is sitting in a chair in the corner. He proceeds to berate Huck for learning to read and becoming “civilized.” In his mind, Huck is putting on airs with his hifalutin education. In some ways, Huck Finn – both as a novel and as a character – is about generational transitions. Huck is clearly going to surpass his father – he is moving into the literate middle class. Huck is a character of the future, fighting against the ignorance of the past.
“And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?…I says I’ll never vote agin. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—I’ll never vote agin as long as I live.”
First, some context – Huck’s dad kidnaps Huck and takes him to a cabin in the woods to prevent Huck’s education and maintain his custody over his son. At this moment in the text, Huck’s dad is ranting about the fact that a black man could be educated and could vote in Ohio. The irony is clear. Huck’s dad, an alcoholic, illiterate child-abuser, is mad that a black man could achieve this sort of success. In response, Huck’s dad refuses to vote – thereby renouncing any political power that he himself might have. (Here’s an interesting take on this rant.)
Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn Quotes (Continued)
One of the reasons Huck Finn is interesting to me is because it was written well after the American Civil War. Published in 1884, the events of the novel take place at least thirty years before. In other words, the issue that Huck’s father is railing against is no longer an issue (at least, legally). Understood in this way, Huck represents the last generation of Americans to consider slavery a viable moral system. As we will see, Huck’s experience with Jim opens his eyes to the humanity of enslaved people. He will – eventually – push back against the dominant belief in the moral rightness of slavery. In effect, the text dramatizes the moral development necessary to reject slavery.
“It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a n****r; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.”
I went back and forth whether to include the N-word in this quote. Ultimately, it feels necessary because Huck’s use of the term shows how significant his apology is. The society Huck belongs to reduces black people to the level of animals – and yet, Huck apologizes to Jim as an equal. In other words, Huck feels an ethical responsibility to Jim. Huck’s time with Jim on the raft allows a connection to form outside of the racial caste system of the American south.
“We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”
This Huck Finn quote appears after Huck has fled the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud. Huck makes it back to the raft, reunites with Jim, and pushes off back into the river. This quote functions in a variety of ways. First and foremost, Huck means it literally – the houses, clothes, and schools of civilization are “cramped up and smothery” compared to the openness of the river. But more than that, the raft is the only place that Huck (and Jim) can (provisionally) evade the violence of America. In other words, the raft is the only place where Huck and Jim can truly be individuals, unencumbered by oppressive societal mores.
“Yes; en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo’.”
Right before this moment, Jim has been telling Huck a story about losing a sum of money, to which Huck replies, “Well, it’s all right anyway…long as you’re going to be rich again some time or other.” Jim then says the above quote. What’s interesting to me about this quote is Jim’s juxtaposition of two different value systems. On the one hand, Jim “owns” himself – on the other, he is unable to access the system that places monetary value on a human being.
Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them.
It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before…I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, “Let up on me—it ain’t too late yet—I’ll paddle ashore at the first light and tell.” I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. All my troubles was gone.
First, some context. This Huck Finn quote comes as Jim and Huck start getting closer to the Ohio River, the point at which Jim will be a free man. Understandably, this causes Huck no shortage of stress. For someone like Huck, born and raised in a society where slavery is an accepted part of society, this moment is an ethical reckoning.
Mark Twain Huck Finn Quotes (Continued)
Here, Huck is struggling with the disconnect between seeing Jim as a person versus seeing Jim as a piece of property. What is interesting in this particular quote is Huck’s understanding of “conscience.” We’re likely to believe that our conscience is something that transcends the social circ*mstances of our birth – as if what we think is right and wrong isn’t contextual. How many times have you heard someone say “I know what’s right” – as if values don’t come from the society around us.
Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn Quotes (Continued)
In the context of the novel’s publication, Huck’s “conscience” is telling him to do something that contemporary readers of the book know to be wrong. (Remember, the book was published in 1886, long after the question of slavery had been settled.) This is another example of how The Adventures of Huck Finn dramatizes the ethical and moral conflict around slavery. What’s particularly interesting about this moment is the easy satisfaction that Huck experiences when he gives in to what (his) society says is morally right. It’s always easier to go along with what you’ve been taught to believe.
“Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de ONLY fren’ ole Jim’s got now.”
I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn’t. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:
“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.”
Jim is an ambivalent character. There are those who criticize Twain’s depiction of Jim as submissive and stereotypic. I don’t disagree. Certainly there are moments in the text where Jim isn’t as well-rendered as he could be. At the same time, I want to respond to this criticism in two ways. First, the reader should never forget that the narrator is a 13-year-old. There simply isn’t much subtlety to Huck’s understanding of the world. Second, if The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is aimed at dramatizing the necessary ethical and moral development of white America in relation to slavery, then Jim functions as a necessary (if simplified) proxy for the black population.
Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn Quotes (Continued)
At the same time, this quote shows how perfectly Jim understands the precarity of his situation. While he might be a person on the raft, as soon as either of them leaves its utopian safety, the violence of the external world comes flooding back. Quite simply, Jim is completely and utterly dependent on Huck. A single word from Huck would send him back into slavery. Jim knows this too well. I see the quote above as strategic. Jim is encouraging Huck to be the best, most-loyal version of himself.
I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”—and tore it up.
Jim has been betrayed and taken back into slavery and Huck has to decide what he’s going to do. The simplest thing to do would be to write Miss Watson (the person to whom Jim is enslaved) and let her know where he is. This would result in Jim going back into slavery. Instead, Huck decides that he will risk damnation rather than see Jim suffer. In effect, this is the moment that Huck rejects the ideology of his culture. As such, it’s the ethical climax of the book.
Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn Quotes – Wrapping Up
Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a text divided. On the one hand, it’s inextricably linked to (the childish) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. On the other hand, it’s trying to figure out how to represent the most heinous part of American history. For this reason, the sections with Tom Sawyer seem completely disconnected from Huck’s moral development. That being said, I have a new appreciation for the novel. Its dramatization of Huck’s moral development and his rejection of the values of his community feel particularly relevant in our post-truth era.
If you’ve found this article on Huck Finn quotes useful or interesting, you can also check out my summaries and analyses of 1984, The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, The Crucible, Beloved, and Brave New World.
