Chapters 9-11 Summary
In the beginning of chapter nine Huck and Jim start to worry that someone will find them on their island. Huck and Jim set out to find a hiding place. Huck and Jim find a cave on the island and they stash all of their stuff in the cave. Later a storm comes and Huck and Jim hide in the cave. Jim and Huck are safe, but the river floods badly Huck and Jim find a house floating down the river, and when they look in the house they saw a dead man. Huck and Jim raid the house of anything useful and then return to their cave. In the next chapter even more of Jim's superstitions come out. Jim tells Huck not to think about the dead man because it is bad luck. Jim also tells Huck it was bad luck when he picked up a snake skin. Jim's worries are right, because during the night a snake comes and bites Jim in the leg. Jim is ok, but his leg is badly swollen. A couple of days later, Jim's leg gets better, and Huck decides that he wants to go to the mainland to find out information. Jim is wary, but allows Huck to go provided he disguises himself as a girl. Huck goes to shore and talks to an old woman who is new in town while dressed up like a girl. In the beginning of the next chapter Huck talks to the lady about his murder. The lady tells Huck that his father was a big suspect, but Jim also was a suspect since he ran away on the day Huck died. Huck's father had left town in fear of being hung. The woman also tells Huck about how people saw smoke over the island that Huck was staying on and that there was going to be a search party the next day. After talking for a while more the woman figures out that Huck is a boy. The woman assumes that he is a run away apprentice, and Huck goes along with her idea and makes up a story. The woman tells Huck if he is ever in trouble to contact her. Huck then returns to his island and warns Jim about the search party, and then he and Jim leave the island.
Reflections
I think that Huck is starting to go against the things that he has been taught by society. Huck is starting to make his own opinions like not to turn in Jim and to be friends with Jim. Huck is gaining independence and becoming more like a man rather than a lost little boy whose father hit him. It is a good thing for Huck that this is happening because the lessons he is learning now will help him throughout his whole life. I thought that Mrs. Loftus was a kind person in not turning in Huck after she found out that he was a boy. I know that she doesn't know that whole truth about Huck, but I think that hiding a runaway apprentice takes courage. I wonder what would have happened if she found out who Huck was and if she would have supported his running away and making his life his own. I'm starting to finds Jim's mostly accurate superstitions to be uncanny and unsettling. In real life, superstitions are nothing more that rumors that aren't true at all, but in this book Jim is correct and unusually large amount of times. I can understand how Huck is getting sucked into believing these superstitions.