Huckleberry Finn: Tom Sawyer's Gang

• The story begins with Huck and Tom sneaking away from the Widow Douglas’s house.
• Huck trips and makes a noise, alerting Miss Watson’s slave, Jim, who investigates.
• Jim does not want to be a slave, but he checks outside the house for danger to protect Miss Watson and her interests.
• Tom steals candles from the Widow Douglas’s kitchen, leaving five cents as payment.
• Tom plays a trick on the sleeping Jim by hanging Jim’s hat on a tree branch.
• Jim tells the other slaves that a witch rode him and hung his hat on the branch.
• The other slaves believe Jim's story about the witch.
• Tom and Huck meet up with other boys to form Tom Sawyer’s Gang.
• The boys swear an oath to the Gang.
• The oath requires that if a member reveals a secret, his family will be killed.
• Since Huck only has a drunk for a father, he offers Miss Watson to be killed instead.
• The gang's purpose is to rob people.
• Tom says they should kill or ransom those they rob, because it is what happens in the books Tom reads.
• The gang agrees not to kill women, but to keep them in the cave and treat them sweetly.
• The gang cannot rob on Sunday, because that would be wicked.

Huck's Return Home

• Miss Watson scolds Huck for dirtying his clothes when he returns home.
• The Widow Douglas washes Huck’s clothes and Huck resolves to behave himself.
• Miss Watson prays with Huck and tells him that he will receive whatever he asks for.
• Huck prays for a fish-line but it doesn’t have any hooks .
• Huck believes that prayer is therefore useless.
• Huck recalls thinking about prayer and wonders why the Widow Douglas can't get her silver snuff-box back that was stolen through prayer.
• The Widow Douglas says that one can only get “spiritual gifts” by praying.
• Huck decides he would rather belong to the Widow's conception of providence because he knows the Widow's intentions are good.
• Huck reflects on his father, Pap, who is an abusive drunkard and has not been seen for a year.
• Some people thought Pap drowned
• Huck doesn’t think it was Pap’s body because the body was floating on its back, and a man’s body would float on its face.

Tom Sawyer's Gang

• Tom Sawyer’s Gang played robber for about a month.
• The gang would hide in the woods and charge on passers-by.
• The gang never actually robbed anyone
• Tom refers to the hogs as “ingots” and produce as “julery”.
• Tom tells the Gang about Spanish merchants and "A-rabs" camping in a nearby cave with riches.
• The Gang raids the camp only to find a Sunday school picnic.
• Tom says that magicians transformed the Spaniards and Arabs into "an infant Sunday school".
• Huck rubs a lamp and ring to summon genies, but nothing happens.
• Huck concludes that Tom lied about the Arabs and elephants.
• A few months pass as Huck goes to school.
• He learns reading, writing, and arithmetic.
• He gets used to the Widow’s household and begins to like it.
• Huck overturns a saltcellar at breakfast and is prevented by Miss Watson from throwing salt over his left shoulder for good luck.
• Huck looks for bad things coming his way and finds tracks in the snow with crosses in the left boot-heel.
• Huck goes to Judge Thatcher’s house, and Judge Thatcher buys Huck's property for a dollar.
• Jim does magic with a hairball.

Pap's Return

• Huck asks Jim what Pap is going to do.
• Jim cannot get the hairball to talk without money.
• Jim says Pap doesn’t know what he is going to do, and that Huck is going to have troubles and joys in his life.
• When Huck goes up to his room he see's Pap sitting there.
• Pap reprimands Huck for wearing nice clothes and learning to read and write.
• Pap warns that Huck better stop going to school because none of Huck’s family was educated.
• Pap says he hears that Huck is rich and demands his money.
• Huck gives Pap one dollar, and Pap takes it to buy whiskey.
• Pap tries to get Judge Thatcher to give him Huck’s fortune, but the Judge refuses.
• Judge Thatcher and the Widow go to court to take Huck from Pap’s custody, but the new judge refuses to separate a son from his father.
• Pap is pleased with the court’s custody ruling
• He threatens to beat Huck unless Huck raises money for him.
• Huck borrows three dollars from Judge Thatcher, which Pap uses to get drunk.
• Pap is jailed for making a ruckus.
• The new judge invites Pap to supper and lectures him on temperance.
• Pap swears to change his life, so the judge provides Pap with a room, but Pap trades his new coat for whiskey.
• The next morning Pap crawl out of his room drunk, breaks his arm, and almost freezes to death where he falls.
• The judge concludes that Pap can only be reformed “with a shot-gun, maybe.”

Imprisonment

• Pap continues to harass Judge Thatcher for Huck’s money and harasses Huck for going to school.
• Huck gives Pap money to avoid a beating.
• Pap gets drunk and is jailed as a result
• The Widow reprimands Pap for loitering around her estate.
• Pap kidnaps Huck and takes him to an isolated log hut in the woods near the river.
• Huck and Pap live on what fish they catch and what game they shoot.
• Pap locks Huck up to go to the store to trade fish and game for whiskey.
• Huck becomes accustomed to his new living situation.
• The cabin that Pap takes Huck is a place where Huck’s freedom is limited.
• Huck adapts to life in the cabin because he has no other reasonable option.
• Huck likes the “lazy and jolly” life he leads with Pap: the smoking, fishing, without the burden of study.
• Huck reverts back to his original nature so much that he wonders how he adapted to the lifestyle endorsed by the Widow.
• Pap beats Huck so often and severely that Huck can no longer stand the abuse.

Huck's Escape

• Pap leaves Huck alone in the locked cabin too often, making Huck feel lonely
• Huck begins to look for ways to escape.
• Huck finds a rusty old saw and begins to remove a section from a log of the cabin.
• Huck hears Pap’s gun go off in the woods outside and hides all evidence of his work. before Pap returns home.
• Pap rants that his lawsuit to get Huck’s money is proceeding too slowly.
• The Widow and Judge Thatcher may be succssful in another bid to win custody of Huck.
• Pap threatens to take Huck to an even more isolated location and tells Huck to load their skiff with supplies for a journey.
• Pap becomes drunk and rants against the government for taking Huck from his flesh-and-blood father.
• Pap denounces the government for allowing a man of mixed race to become a wealthy, educated college professor with the right to vote.
• Pap says the professor should be put up at a slave auction and sold.
• Pap trips on a tub of salt pork and rolls around in the dirt before getting his jug of whiskey.
• Huck falls asleep
• Pap screams that snakes are crawling up his legs
• Pap grabs Huck by the back of his jacket calling him the Angel of Death.
• Huck slides out of his jacket to escape and Pap drops down with his back against the door to rest, guarding the knife under him, and falls asleep.
• Huck grabs Pap’s gun, loads it, and points it at the sleeping Pap, waiting for him to wake up.
• Pap wakes Huck, who fell asleep, and asks him what he’s doing with the gun.
• Huck lies and says that someone tried to break in.
• Pap tells Huck to go check the fishing line for breakfast.
• Huck seeing a passing canoe decides to hide the canoe and use it in his escape.
• Huck tells many lies, motivated by Huck’s desire to protect people.
• Pap berates him for taking so long with the fish and Huck lies that he fell in the river.
• Pap says that Huck should rouse him the next time an intruder comes prowling, and Huck has an idea to prevent Pap and the Widow from pursuing him after he escapes.
• Huck tells a white lie to Pap to cover up his plans.

Faking his Death

• Pap and Huck collect nine logs from the river to sell and then eat dinner.
• After dinner, Pap locks Huck up in the cabin again and boats to town to sell the nine logs.
• Huck retrieves his saw and finishes making his hole in the cabin.
• Huck takes provisions from the cabin and stores them in his canoe.
• He hides any trace of his escape and seals the hole he made in the cabin.
• Huck kills a hog, and takes it back to his camp by smashing in the door of the cabin.
• Huck slits the pig’s throat so that its blood covers the dirt floor of the cabin.
• He bloodies the ax, sticks some of his own pulled-out hair onto the blade, and slings the tool into a corner of the cabin.
• Huck dumps a sack full of rocks and the pig carcass in the river and carries the bag of meal about a hundred yards from the house, trailing meal as he does so.
• He also drops Pap’s whetstone at the spot where he stops trailing the grain.
• Huck plans to paddle to Jackson’s Island on the river, and to visit towns at night to stock up on supplies.
• Huck hears a sound and Pap paddling back to the cabin.
• Huck slips quietly down the river in his canoe to Jackson’s Island.
• Huck lands and conceals his canoe, sees a raft go by, and hears a man aboard shouting commands to someone else.
• Huck goes in the woods to sleep before breakfast.

Jackson's Island

• Huck wakes and sees squirrels jabbering.
• He hears a boom and sees a ferry firing a canon to make his carcass come to the surface.
• Huck retrieves a loaf of bread with quicksilver and eats it.
• Huck thinks that the Widow or parson must have prayed for a loaf of bread to find his body.
• Huck thinks prayer can only work if the intentions are pure
• Huck sees Pap, Judge Thatcher, and Tom Sawyer on the ferry talking about Huck’s “murder.”
• The captain tells them to scan the shore of Jackson Island for the corpse.
• The cannon is fired.
• Huck makes a tent and puts in more fishing lines to catch breakfast
• At this time Huck is lonesome.
• Huck comes across the ashes of a campfire and hides in a tree.
• Huck paddles to the Illinois bank of the river to prepare supper, and remain there for the night.
• Huck hears horse and human voices so he shoves out and ties up back to his old place
• Though he tries to sleep, he goes into the woods with his gun, to re-find the campfire ashes he discovered earlier, and sees a fire with Jim sleeping nearby.
• Jim thinks Huck is a ghost.

Reunion with Jim

• Huck is happy to be no longer lonesome with Jim
• Huck learns that Jim came to Jackson’s Island the night after Huck was allegedly killed.
• Jim has been living on strawberries.
• Huck brings out his provisions of meal, bacon, and coffee, and they cook catfish which Jim attributes to witchcraft.
• Huck explains his escape to Jim.
• Jim asks Huck to swear to silence over Jim's secret.
• Jim says Miss Watson treated him poorly and threatened to sell him to a slaveholder in New Orleans so Jim fled and swam up to Jackson’s Island to avoid being tracked.
• Jim says that certain flying chickens signify that it is going to rain with young birds doing the same .
• Jim also gives signs of bad luck such as counting what one is going to eat shaking a tablecloth after sundown, and killing a young bird.
• Huck asks about good-luck signs.
• Jim says that having hairy arms and a hairy chest will make one rich
• Jim admits that he isn’t rich now, but he was once rich
• Jim says he is rich now because he owns himself.