Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 24 Summary & Analysis

As the duke and king devise another con, Jim tells the duke that it is uncomfortable to be tied up every day. In response, the duke invents a new way for Jim to stay by himself during a day without risking capture. He dresses Jim up in a costume for King Lear, a character in Shakespeare’s play King Lear, and paints Jim blue. The duke then makes a sign saying that Jim is a sick Arab. When people approach him, Jim is to jump out and carry on and howl till they leave him be.

The king, dressed in black clothes that make him look “swell and starchy,” rafts to a nearby town with Huck. As they drift in, the two run across a young country boy. The king says he’ll give the boy a lift and invites him on the raft, which the boy accepts.

On the raft, the boy tells the king that he resembles Mr. Wilks. The king lies and says that he is a reverend, and that he is sorry if Mr. Wilks is late for something. The boy then reveals that Mr. Wilks’s brother Peter Wilks has died, and that, as he died, he wished to see his brothers from England, the living ones being Harvey and the deaf mute William. The king asks more questions about the Wilks family, and the boy obliges in answering.

After dropping the boy off, the king tells Huck to fetch the duke. Huck knows what the king is up to (conning the Wilks family), but he retrieves the duke anyway. The king tells the duke everything the boy told him, all the while imitating an English accent. After hailing a yawl, the duke, king, Huck and Jim all travel to the town where the Wilks family lives. There the duke and king claim to be Peter Wilks’s brothers Harvey and William. The townspeople sympathize and help them, while Huck thinks their con “enough to make a [person] ashamed of the human race.”