The adventures ratchet up when they are joined on the raft by a self-proclaimed 'duke' and a 'king' - shysters both, who spend their time in figuring how to fleece the public in the little river towns. Huck and Jim have run-ins with desperados and family feuds and even manage to get run down by a steamboat. Modern listeners will be intrigued by the unencumbered life of the pair they make do with coffee, fish from the river, and little else (but of course, when they do need something extra, they don't mind helping themselves to it without recourse to money!) The facts of how black people were treated in this period give Huck and Jim their license for life on the run. Much has been written about the statement Twain is making about slavery in this book, but it's really secondary to the story.

At each stop, Huck engages his talent for mixing fact with bald-faced lies to endlessly get himself out of situations. Huck and Jim experience life as a series of tableaus as the river sweeps them through small towns on their way South. Huck escapes his civilized life when he arranges his own 'murder' and turns back into the backwoods, downriver yokel he started as, and in the process springing a slave, Jim, from bondage. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain creates an entertaining adventure of Middle America in the 1800's - afloat on a raft on the Mississippi River. LibriVox recording of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (version 02).

Huckleberry finn audiobook