Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 35 Summary & Analysis

Tom is dissatisfied that liberating Jim will be so easy. He wishes there were guards to drug, or a guard-dog, or that Jim were better chained down. He sighs that he and Huck will have to invent difficulties; for he wants the escape to be as grand as one of those carried out in the romantic books he likes to read.

Tom also proposes that he and Huck make Jim a rope ladder by tearing and tying up their sheets, and that they then bake it into a pie so it can be delivered to Jim. Huck thinks this plan is unnecessary, but Tom disagrees. Huck gives in, but cautions Tom that Aunt Sally will be greatly displeased to find that the boys have torn up her sheets. Huck suggests that he and Tom steal a sheet off of the clotheslines, and Tom agrees.

Tom also says that Huck should steal a shirt off the clothesline, so that Jim can use it to keep a journal. Huck exclaims that Jim doesn’t even know how to write, to which Tom responds that Jim can at least make marks on the shirt. He also proposes Jim be given something like a candlestick to file into a pen, that he use his own blood as ink, and that he be smuggled tin plates to write little messages on before throwing them out of the window to be read. Huck thinks all this is impractical.

That morning, Huck steals things to give Jim, as well as a watermelon from the slave’s watermelon patch. Tom, however, tells Huck that he can only steal what he needs to help set Jim free, and he demands that Huck give the slaves a dime without telling them that it is in exchange for the stolen watermelon. Huck doesn’t see what good it does him to represent a prisoner if it means he can’t even steal a watermelon.

Finally, Tom tells Huck that they need to steal tools to dig Jim out of the hut with. Huck asks why they don’t use some picks and shovels the two found earlier, but Tom says that no prisoner has ever used picks or shovels, and that what they need for digging are knives. Tom calculates it would take 37 years to dig to Jim with knives, and, knowing that he and Huck can’t take that long, he proposes that he and Huck pretend amongst themselves that it takes them 37 years to save Jim. Huck says that pretending isn’t impractical and doesn’t hurt anyone, so he agrees. Tom tells Huck to steal three knives and, after a little protest, Huck agrees to do so.