Huck Finn Raft Quotes

This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed – only a little kind of a low chuckle.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Hucks explains that while he and Jim float downsteam on their raft, the Mississippi is a
source of food and spiritual nourishment for them. They enjoy the freedom of being in the wilderness.

Sometimes we’d have the whole river to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark – which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two – on a raft or scow, you know, and maybe you could here a fiddle or a song coming over from of them crafts. It’s lovely to live on a raft.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 19. Huck and Jim really embrace the freeom of life on the river.

We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened – Jim he allowed they was made, or only just happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 19. Living on a raft on the Mississippi, what better life, what more freedom for Huck and Jim.

“Make the best o’ things the way you find ’em, says I – that’s my motto. This ain’t no bad thing that we’ve struck here – plenty grub and an easy life – come, give us your hand, duke, and le’s all be friends.”

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 19. After the Duke and King decide to work together, Huck is relieved. Trust and the acceptance of differences between people help build better friendships and make life on a raft a whole lot easier, he feels. The raft here is a symbol of society.

They asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running-was Jim a runaway n*****?
Says I: “Goodness sakes, would a runaway n***** run south?”
No, they allowed he wouldn’t.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 20. The Duke and the King are questioning Huck about the slave Jim, asking if he was a runaway. Huck thinks on his feet with this ingenious sarcastic reply. He wasn’t intentionally going south, but had made a wrong turn and uses his mistake to cover up their plan.

He dressed Jim up in King Lear’s outfit – it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint and painted Jim’s face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, solid blue, like a man that’s been drownded nine days. Blamed if he warn’t the horriblest looking outrage I ever see. Then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so:

Sick Arab – but harmless when not out of his head.

And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam. Jim was satisfied.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 24. To avoid Jim having to be tied up on the raft every day (pretending to be a runaway slave), the Duke figures out a better solution. He paints Jim in blue and makes him wear a King Lear costume. Jim spends the rest of the river journey looking undignified and like a sick Arab. The passage is an allusion to the protagonist of Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, who has episodes of madness.

So, in two seconds, away we went, a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump and crack my heels a few times, I couldn’t help it; 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! – and just a laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 29. Huck after helping expose the swindlers the Duke and King and escaping from them on the raft with Jim. But this time the Mississippi no longer symbolizes freedom for Huck and Jim, as the con duo catch up with them in a small boat.

“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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