Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapter 21 - 24
The king and duke begin to prepare theatre acts of Shakespearean plays for their next scheme, but the king has to be coached by the duke who claims to have enacted several plays in the past. The duke decides to include Hamlet’s famous soliloquy and so attempts to remember it from memory, however, his version of the soliloquy is comically terrible. Despite its inaccuracy, the soliloquy leaves Huck impressed with the Duke. They reach a poor town in Arkansas where they witness a drunk named Boggs being shot to death by the man he insults, Colonel Sherburn. The townspeople had enjoyed the drunk man’s antics and worked themselves into a fervor for justice which involves lynching the Colonel. The angry crowd marches to the colonel’s home but he faces them head-on with a shotgun in his hand and provokes them to action. He calls them cowards who need the cover of darkness and masks to enact their dirty deeds of murder and lynching. The crowd breaks up at the Colonel’s terse words.
The Shakespearean play turns out to be an utter disaster as few people in the town show up despite the king’s putting up posters for the play. Huck watches the circus show that happens to be playing in the town, and he watches with amusement as the townspeople are entertained by ridiculous acts such as that of a drunk man riding a wild horse. The duke and king try a different approach with their theatre piece and advertise for one called the Royal Nonesuch. The duke hosts a full crowd and introduces the king, who appears to be naked but is painted over with a great variety of colors. The king frolics around the stage on all fours as the audience members fall to the floor laughing hysterically, however, the show comes to an abrupt halt. The townspeople are severely displeased and nearly attack both the two conmen, but one of them stands to convince the audience that they should spread a positive review for the theatre piece so that the other half of the town can also fall victim to the con. The duke and king are clever enough to promise a third show but escape right after collecting the payment for the third day. The crowd gathers the third night only to pelt the two conmen with odious smelling projectiles but finds itself duped yet again.
Huck returns to the raft with the two conmen, and regrets being involved with the morally corrupt men. Jim asks Huck how men as evil as these could ever be aristocrats, while Huck counters that most kings behaved in much the same manner. Jim takes over Huck’s watch so that the young boy can get some sleep, and he tells Huck about a time he had hit his young daughter without realizing that she had lost her hearing due to an illness. They sail down the river with the conmen but Huck and Jim begin to look for opportunities to be rid of them due to their continuous pursuit of evil money-making schemes. The king comes across a man waiting for a steamboat near a town, and the king learns of a recently deceased wealthy man called John Wilkis. The townsfolk were expecting the arrival of John’s brothers, Harvey and William, from England to settle the matter of the will. The king hungrily learns all the facts about the recently deceased man, his relations, and his associations with the people in town. They take the man to the steamboat and the king sends for the Duke who is out searching for his next trick. Huck watches with disgust as the king tells the duke about all the information he had learned from the man they had dropped onto the steamboat.
The two decide the parts they are going to play in their new farce which includes practicing a fake English accent and rehearsing to be deaf and dumb. The two arrive in town and introduce themselves to the townspeople as the brothers of the deceased with Huck as their servant or rather a valley. The townspeople are easily taken in by the brilliant act of sorrow that the conmen display, but the situation leaves Huck with shame for all of mankind.
Analysis
Jim and Huckleberry Finn meet a great plethora of people in their journey, but nearly all of them are somehow deeply flawed. Most of the characters from these southern towns are either poor, uncultured, violent or foolish, or gullible. This picture of the South that Twain paints in the novel seem to be a stinging critique of the South, which was his birthplace. In this same vein, the instance with the lynching of Colonel Sherburn is extremely thorough and thought-provoking as the Colonel reveals the hollowness of the widely touted concept of Honor.
Jim and Huckleberry’s relationship continues to evolve, and it is accompanied by Huckleberry’s growing understanding that Jim is equal with all the capacity for emotion as white people. Jim’s regret over mistreating his child goes against the popular view of the time which postulated that African American slaves could not form deep familial bonds that the whites held dearly. This was a viewpoint that fed itself since slave owners often separated families and used the slaves’ resignation to their fate as proof of their theory. This sequence is also interesting because Huck sees Jim experience remorse over hitting his child, which is perhaps something that Huck has wondered about his abusive father.
