The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Study Guide 3

Answer each question in complete sentences. This time you can single space, because of the length of the
assignment. Underlined questions are optional or for extra credit. You only need to type out the answers.

Due: November 8th

Chapters 32-43

Chapters 32-35

Identifying Facts

1. Who sells Jim out?

2. Briefly describe the Phelps farm.
3. Who does Mrs. Phelps think Huck is?
4. What does Tom think Huck is at first?
5. Describe how Tom shocks Aunt Sally.
6. Who does Tom pretend to be?
7. Explain how Tom figures out where Jim is.
8. How do Huck and Tom overcome the difficulty that they can’t take thirty-seven years to free Jim?

Interpreting Meanings

9. What is Huck’s understanding of Providence in Chapter 32? Would Miss Watson agree with it?
10. How does Twain use irony in the discussion between Huck and Mrs. Phelps about the steamboat
accident that Huck makes up?
11. What accounts for Huck’s surprise that Tom will help him steal Jim?
12. Why do you think Huck tries to help the duke and king when he finds out that the townspeople know
about them?
13. How does Huck respond to the duke and king being tarred and feathered? Is his response at all
surprising? Does it remind you of anything earlier in the novel? Explain.
14. Why does Huck prefer Tom’s plan for freeing Jim to his own?
15. After Tom tells Huck that it’s all right for them to steal, Huck steals a watermelon. Tom is angered
by this and insists that Huck pay for the watermelon. Why does Tom respond this way, and what
does this scene tell us about the differences between Huck and Tom?

Chapters 36-39

Identifying Facts

16. What do Huck and Tom use for light while they are digging?
17. Describe what Tom does when he can’t climb the lightning rod.
18. Who does Aunt Sally blame for the missing shirt?
19. What does Tom want Jim to water his plant with?
20. What effect do the warnings have on the family?
 Interpreting Meanings

21. How would you compare Huck’s and Tom’s attitudes toward the escape?
22. What characteristics does Aunt Sally have that enable the boys to take advantage of her?
23. What is the irony in the way that Tom and Huck get the grindstone into the hut?
24. Is there any evidence that Jim is really suffering during all of this? Does Huck’s response to Jim’s
plight seem reasonable to you?
25. When Tom devises a coat of arms for Jim, what evidence is there that his knowledge of these things
is really quite superficial?

Chapters 40-43

Identifying Facts

26. What effect has the last warning letter had on the Phelpses?
27. How does Tom get hurt?
28. Why doesn’t Huck sneak out at night to visit Tom?
29. Who clarifies the identities of Tom and Huck?
30. What has happened to Huck’s father?

Interpreting Meanings

31. What does Jim’s behavior in these chapters say about his character?
32. What narrative purpose does the doctor’s refusal to share a canoe with Huck serve?
33. What effect does the doctor’s speech in support of Jim have? Is this as great an effect as it should be?
34. How believable is the deus ex machine (literally, the “god from a machine,” a theatrical term referring
to a sudden and unexpected solution to a seemingly insoluble problem), through which Jim is freed?
Explain.
35. Where is Huck going at the end of the novel? What does this imply about the society in which he
lives, and his place in it?
36. Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn “a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed
conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.” What influences have “deformed”
Huck’s conscience? How does his heart defeat his conscience?

The Novel as a Whole

37. What advantages does the river have as a setting and vehicle for a picaresque novel such as this?
What disadvantages does it have for this novel?
38. Briefly describe the style of Huckleberry Finn. What is your opinion of its effectiveness?
39. Compare and contrast life on the raft to life on the shore.
40. How would you describe Jim’s intelligence and abilities? How “ignorant” is he, really? Support
your opinion.
41. Why does Huck do what Tom says all the time? What elements contribute to Tom’s authority?
42. What is Twain satirizing in the episode where Colonel Sherburn shoots Boggs? How would you
compare the tone of this satire to that in the rest of the book?
43. What aspects of Huck’s character make him a good narrator? What difficulties are there for the
reader in having Huck as narrator?
44. How does Twain portray small-town life in this book?
45. Based on how episodes are portrayed in the novel, how do you think Twain feels about “honor” as
defined by the Grangerfords and Tom?