Huckleberry Finn is Twain's story of a child's passage from youth into adulthood, but it is also an allegory about America's passage into maturity. Twain's problem, though, was that he could not devise a happy ending for his hero. Can Huck ever get clear of his culture's racism, greed and perverse romanticism? What psychological obstacles does he face? What feat must he accomplish to make a happy ending possible? Remember that Twain himself did not think he had any answers.

Find a thesis which interprets Twain's novel as both a psychological study and a political allegory.

• Section 1: Huck's situation? What is the relation between Huck's situation and America's situation in 1876?
• Section 2: What does Huck need? What psychological obstacles stand in his way? How can they be overcome? What new morality is Huck learning from Jim?
• Section 3: Huck and Jim Drift South: Chapters Seventeen to Twenty-Five, pp. 117-183 (Huck Finn Map) 

What vision of America emerges as Huck and Jim drift South? What is at the root of America's problems according to Twain? How can they be overcome? Is a happy ending possible?

The Situation: Jim realizes that he has passed Cairo. (Cairo Passed (114)) (The Raft is Smashed (115))

Kentucky: The Grangerfords and the Stephensons (Chapters 17 and 18 (pp. 117-134))

• The Grangerford's House: (Huck as George Jackson)  Buck (119); The Ideal American Home (120) and George Jackson:  Orphan Tale #3 (119))
• Emmeline Grangerford's Masterpiece in her Book of the Dead (121-22)
  
• "Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots" (122-23)
• Colonel Grangerford  and the Southern Cult of Honor (125)
• How often has Huck thought about Jim since he arrived at the Grangerford's home? 
• Huck's nigger (126); the Reunion with Jim (131) 
  
• The Feud (128): Miss Sophia and Harney Shepherdson (132)
• Huck's Reaction to the Death of Buck (133-34)

Huck and Jim on the Big River (135-137) 

• The Most Lyrical Passage in American Literature (135-37)
  
• Jim Moaning for his Family: The Story of Lizabeth (170)
• Jim's King Lear Disguise (171)
  
• Huck's Letter to the Widow Douglas (221-23)
  
• Huck's Tale to Aunt Sally (230)

Scamming Twain's America with The Duke and The Dauphin:

• (How did Jim conjure them? (see "Polly-voo-franzy" (89))
  
• The Duke and Dauphin Enter (137)
  
• The Duke's Origins (139-40)  The King's Origins (141)
  
• Taking over the raft. Huck's attitude? (142) 
• Orphan Tale #4 (143)

One Horse Towns:

• The Pokeville Camp Meeting (147-48) and the King's Pirate Scam (148)
•  Hamlet's Soliloquy (152)
  
• The Arkansas Crackers (154) 
• Old Boggs (156-57) Old Boggs Shot Dead (158-59) and Col. Sherburn Facing Down the Lynch Mob (161-62) 
• The Circus Rider (162-65) 
• The Royal Nonesuch (166-67)

The Long Lost Uncles of the Wilks Family:

• Arrival in Town (175-76) and Reunion with the Wilks Sisters (177-78) 
  
• The King's Sad Speech (181)
•  The Doctor's Accusation (182-83)
  
• Huck's Lies to the Hare-lip about England 
• Huck Decides to Steal the Money (187-88) 
• The Funeral (193-95)  (the dog howling) 
• The King Sells the Slave Family (196-97) 
• Huck Tells Mary Jane the Truth (198-99) I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. 
• Huck's Memory of Mary Jane (202) Pray for me! .... You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery. And when it comes to beauty -- and goodness, too -- she lays over them all. 
• The King and the Duke Escape and Accuse Huck of Hiding the Gold (216-18)

Turning in Jim:

• Huck's Letter to the Widow Douglas (221-23) [S]omehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was 
• Huck's Tale to Aunt Sally (230)
  
• The Duke and Dauphin Tarred and Feathered (239-40)

Twain's Ending: What was he thinking?

• Freeing Jim (Tom's "Adventure") (290) 
• Jim Learns He Is Free (294)
  
• (Pap's Dead) Lightin' Out for the Territories (295)

Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia, 1862
by Thomas Moran


Eastman Johnson’s Ride for Liberty —
The Fugitive Slaves, March 2, 1862 (1862)