Huck Finn Money Quotes

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn’t had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn’t drop that.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 5. Pap takes Huck’s dollar and curses him for trying to be better than him and threatens to beat him if he didn’t quit school.

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.

“Well, it’s all right anyway, Jim, long as you’re going to be rich again some time or other.”
“Yes; en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo’.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 8, Huck and Jim. Jim says he is worth eight hundred dollars because that is how much Miss Watson was planning to sell him for before his great escape. This quote is a devastating critique of slavery. It also foreshadows Jim becoming rich at the end of the novel.

So then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the n***** all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 11. Huck’s father Pap values alcohol above finding his son’s potential murderer.

“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.

Then he showed us another little job he’d printed and hadn’t charged for, because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway n***** with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and ‘$200 reward’ under it. The reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 20. Huck describes the wanted poster that the Duke had made for runaway slave Jim. This was so they could all travel buy day, and if anyone were to stop them concerning Jim, they could say they had captured him and were returning to his owners. Racism and slavery were very much part of society then.

I felt so ornery and low down and mean, that I says to myself, my mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 26. Hucks feels bad for letting the Duke and King rob the sweet Wilks sisters in one of their most conniving scams. For the first time he acts on his conscience and decides to help the girls save their money. He is being hypocritical as he has never challenged or exposed the fraudster paid, despite knowing what they were from the start.

I tucked the money bag under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then I ran back across the room and in behind the door.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 27. On hearing footsteps, Huck stashes the money he is stealing back from the Duke and King in the nearest hiding place – the coffin. Huck tricks the con duo by using “immoral” actions, but it is done for the greater good to return the money to Mary Jane and her family.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn’t know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does…They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn’t seem to have no luck.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31. The two conmen, the King and Duke, travel from place to place trying on their scams but don’t have much luck making money.

“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.

“I liked the n***** for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a n***** like that is worth a thousand dollars – and kind treatment, too. I had everything I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at home – better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I WAS, with both of ‘m on my hands, and there I had to stick till about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it the n***** was setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep; so I motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 42. The white doctor who treated Tom is sticking up for Jim, who risks his freedom to help with Tom. But he still puts a monetary figure on him – a thousand dollars – like he was still a piece of property.
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