Pap Finn Quotes

“Don’t you give me none o’ your lip,” says he. “You’ve put on considerable many frills since I been away. I’ll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You’re educated, too, they say – can read and write. You think you’re better’n your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t? I’ll take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut’n foolishness, hey? – who told you you could?”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 5. Pap to Huck. Some of first words he has said to his son in years. The good fortune huck appears to have in the care of Widow Douglas – he’s dressed well and has a basic education – appears to make Pap feel threatened. Since he’s not educated, he hypocritically believes that neither should Huck.

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.

They tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 5. Pap is a drunk and is careless.

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.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights…The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn’t long after that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it – all but the cowhide part.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. After his father Pap kidnaps Huck from the Widow Douglas, he feels happy because he doesn’t have many rules in his life. But he doesn’t like when his father beats him.

Then the old man got to cussing and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck’s life with his cruel drunkard father Pap is not a barrel of laughs, more a barrel of alcohol and man’s inhumanity to man.

Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me…The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. For Huck’s father Pap Finn, alcohol has become a priority over necessities like food. He spends more on alcohol than food to eat.

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.

“There was a free n***** there from Ohio – a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane – the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that n***** vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin…

And to see the cool way of that n***** – why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this n***** put up at auction and sold? – that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. A racist rant by Huck’s father Pap. This drunken, illiterate, child-abuser is enraged because a well-educated, well-dressed free black man could vote in another state, but also that he couldn’t be sold into slavery until he’d been in Missouri for six months. The “n-word” is used 219 times in the novel.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t’other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn’t run my way. He didn’t go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck plans to escape during one of his father’s drunken binges.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek – but I couldn’t see no snakes. He started and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him off! he’s biting me on the neck!” I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low:

“Tramp – tramp – tramp; that’s the dead; tramp – tramp – tramp; they’re coming after me; but I won’t go. Oh, they’re here! don’t touch me – don’t! hands off – they’re cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Pap has gone completely delusional as a result of his alcoholism, believing devils were trying to take hold of him.

By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn’t come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck’s life is put in danger by his father’s alcoholism. During one of Pap’s alcohol-fuelled hallucinations, he calls Huck the Angel of Death and threatens to kill him.

I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Huck quotes a story from Pap Finn about the superstition of looking at the moon the wrong way and suffering tragic bad luck as a result.

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.

Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o’clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents’ worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Some nights Hucks lands at a nearby town to buy food or on occasions steal a chicken. His father Pap told him that you might as well steal a chicken whenever you can, because if you don’t want it yourself you can give it away.

Mornings, before daylight, I slipped into corn fields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more – then he reckoned it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Every now and then when they are by a village, Huck goes into a corn field and ‘borrows’ food. Sadly some of his ideas about life comes from his father. One is that stealing something doesn’t make you a bad person, as long as you intend to pay it back.
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