Huck Finn Allusion Quotes

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 1. The Widow Douglas reads to Huck the story of Moses and the Bulrushers from the Bible. But Huck is less interested in dead people and the Widow’s religion, and more in the religion of everyday living.

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.

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.

“Well, dey’s reasons. But you wouldn’ tell on me ef I uz to tell you, would you, Huck?”
“Blamed if I would, Jim.”
“Well, I b’lieve you, Huck. I – I RUN OFF.”
“Jim!”
“But mind, you said you wouldn’ tell – you know you said you wouldn’ tell, Huck.”
“Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest INJUN, I will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum – but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t a-going to tell, and I ain’t a-going back there, anyways. So, now, le’s know all about it.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 8. Huck is shocked that the Jim has run off. But he assures the runaway slave that he will keep his word about not telling on him. To Huck honoring his word to Jim appears more important than his own reputation, and even abiding by the law. Huck likes to defy society’s rules. Abolitionist is an allusion to abolitionism, the movement to end slavery.

“I doan k’yer what de widder say, he warn’t no wise man, nuther. He had some er de dad-fetchedes’ ways I ever see. Does you know ’bout dat chile dat he ‘uz gwyne to chop in two?”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 14. Jim doesn’t care what the Widow Douglas told Huck about Solomon being the wisest man, he is not impressed with his child-chopping. This is an allusion to a Bible story in I Kings 3:16-28, in which the wise King Solomon resolves a dispute between two women over a child by suggesting to cut the child in two.

There was some books too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible, full of pictures. One was ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ about a man that left his family it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 17. In the Grangerford home the perfect placement of the books, including the Bible, suggests that they were seldom read and were meant more for display. Pilgrim’s Progress is an allusion to the John Bunyan allegorical novel about a Christian’s spiritual journey towards heaven.

Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horse-back. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching – all about brotherly love, and such like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 18. Worshippers with guns listening to a sermon on brotherly love! In his own naive way, Huck reveals the hypocrisy of the Grangerford’s and Shepherdson’s Christianity. The garbled term preforeordestination is an allusion to predestination, a doctrine that God ordained all that will happen.

“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.

“You shall, then, before you’re three days older, Fallen Grandeur,” says the duke. “The first good town we come to, we’ll hire a hall and do the sword-fight in Richard III, and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. How does that strike you?”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 20. The Duke asking the King if he had ever trod the boards. This is an allusion to two William Shakespeare plays: the historical drama, Richard III, and the tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet.

The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing – and so on. The people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, “It’s the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!” And people would shout out, “Glory!- A-a-MEN!” And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 20. This passage depicts a level of religious fervor and excitement verging on hysteria. Is the author poking fun at the religious revival meeting, or seeing something genuine and good in it? The serpent reference is an allusion to various Bible passages in both the Old and New Testament (Numbers 21:8-9 and John 3:14).

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.

And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 25. Disgusted after the King’s speech over the coffin of Peter Wilks, pretending to be his brother, Huck tells how music unifies the crowd and changes the vibe into a feel-good one, just like in church. Doxolojer is an allusion to the doxology, a short hymn of praises to God.

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same – she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion – there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 28. Huck on Mary Jane Wilks, who is so moved by Huck’s admission about the conmen duo and him helping her, that she promises to pray for him. The quote is an allusion to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Christ in the Bible. Huck feels he is a Judas to society for helping slave Jim escape.

“No’m, I’m honest about it; I won’t ever do it again – till you ask me.”
“Till I ask you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I lay you’ll be the Methusalem – numskull of creation before ever I ask you – or the likes of you.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 33. A shocked Aunt Sally to nephew Tom Sawyer, whom she doesn’t recognize and is pretending to be William Thompson, after he kisses her full on the mouth. Methuselah is an allusion to the longest-living person in the Bible, who, according to Genesis, lived for 969 years.
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