Huck Finn Alcohol Quotes

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn’t had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn’t drop that.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 5. Pap takes Huck’s dollar and curses him for trying to be better than him and threatens to beat him if he didn’t quit school.

They tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 5. Pap is a drunk and is careless.

So every now and then I’d borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited – this kind of thing was right in his line.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck on Pap’s habitual alcohol binges and violence towards him. The allusion to Cain refers to the biblical character who was son of Adam and Even and murdered his brother Abel.

Then the old man got to cussing and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck’s life with his cruel drunkard father Pap is not a barrel of laughs, more a barrel of alcohol and man’s inhumanity to man.

Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me…The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. For Huck’s father Pap Finn, alcohol has become a priority over necessities like food. He spends more on alcohol than food to eat.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam – he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck’s life with his alcoholic father Pap. The allusion to Adam is about the Bible story of how God formed Adam from the dust of the ground.

“There was a free n***** there from Ohio – a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane – the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. 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? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that n***** vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin…

And to see the cool way of that n***** – why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this n***** put up at auction and sold? – that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. A racist rant by Huck’s father Pap. This drunken, illiterate, child-abuser is enraged because a well-educated, well-dressed free black man could vote in another state, but also that he couldn’t be sold into slavery until he’d been in Missouri for six months. The “n-word” is used 219 times in the novel.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t’other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn’t run my way. He didn’t go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck plans to escape during one of his father’s drunken binges.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek – but I couldn’t see no snakes. He started and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him off! he’s biting me on the neck!” I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low:

“Tramp – tramp – tramp; that’s the dead; tramp – tramp – tramp; they’re coming after me; but I won’t go. Oh, they’re here! don’t touch me – don’t! hands off – they’re cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Pap has gone completely delusional as a result of his alcoholism, believing devils were trying to take hold of him.

By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn’t come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck’s life is put in danger by his father’s alcoholism. During one of Pap’s alcohol-fuelled hallucinations, he calls Huck the Angel of Death and threatens to kill him.

Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was all right; but I’d druther been bit with a snake than pap’s whisky.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Pap’s alcoholism has left Huck with only negative associations of alcohol. Huck is able to see, however, that everyone who drinks isn’t as harmful as his Pap is; he understands that his father is an extreme case.

I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Huck quotes a story from Pap Finn about the superstition of looking at the moon the wrong way and suffering tragic bad luck as a result.

So then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the n***** all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 11. Huck’s father Pap values alcohol above finding his son’s potential murderer.

And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they’d been having. I was glad I didn’t drink whisky; but it wouldn’t made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a treed me because I didn’t breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body COULDN’T breathe and hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill Turner.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Huck is afraid for his life when he and Jim board a steamboat crippled on a rock and he overhears two robbers on whisky threatening to kill a third.

“Well, I’d ben a-runnin’ a little temperance revival thar, ’bout a week, and was the pet of the women-folks, big and little, for I was makin’ it mighty warm for the rummies, I tell you, and takin’ as much as five or six dollar a night.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 19. We are introduced to the pretend Duke and King, a pair of fraudsters and scammers. This description of a con game by the pretend King contains an allusion to the temperance movement, a social and political campaign against the consumption of alcohol.

“Here comes old Boggs! – in from the country for his little old monthly drunk; here he comes, boys!”
All the loafers looked glad; I reckoned they was used to having fun out of Boggs. One of them says:
“Wonder who he’s a-gwyne to chaw up this time. If he’d a-chawed up all the men he’s ben a-gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he’d have considerable ruputation now.”
Another one says, “I wisht old Boggs ‘d threaten me, ‘cuz then I’d know I warn’t gwyne to die for a thousan’ year.”
Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out:
“Cler the track, thar. I’m on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise.”

He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he’d attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn’t wait now because he’d come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, “Meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 21. The town drunk Boggs rides into town on his horse, threatening to kill Colonel Sherburn. He goes on bouts of drunkenness like this regular regularly and makes these outlandish statements. But he doesn’t physically harm anyone.

He cussed away with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again, with his gray hair a-flying. Everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn’t no use – up the street he would tear again, and give Sherburn another cussing.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 21. Old Boggs rides into town drunk, shouting for Colonel Sherburn, the richest man in town, and screaming insults at him.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn’t know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does…They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn’t seem to have no luck.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31. The two conmen, the King and Duke, travel from place to place trying on their scams but don’t have much luck making money.

So me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn’t walk, and couldn’t do nothing to them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and Jim again.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31. Huck takes advantage of the King’s drinking to escape from him and his fellow conman the Duke.

“Blamed if I know – that is, what’s become of the raft. That old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what he’d spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, ‘That little rascal has stole our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.'”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31. The Duke speaking about the King, who as soon as he gets his hands on money drinks it away. Much like Huck’s father Pap.
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