Fate of the King and the Duke in The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essay

The Fate of the King and the Duke

The characters of the King and the Duke are most likely the most important after Huck and Jim in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. These two men come into Huck's story in chapter nineteen when he leaves the Grangerfords, a family who is fighting a continuous and everlasting war against their neighbors, the Shepherdsons. Huck sees the King and the Duke being chased by some dogs, and he decides to take them aboard the raft, which Huck and Jim are using to travel down the Mississippi River. Huck eventually realizes that the two men that he helped are con artists. Towards the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the two phonies are tarred and feathered by a mob who was finally able to catch them. The punishment of the Duke and the King was suitable because the scams they performed were sickening, and they obviously were not bothered by what they did.

Mark Twain shows his disrespect for the two imposters through Huck's first impression of them, and how he reacts to the small scams they carry out. The appearance of the King and the Duke is negative from the moment he sees them. His impression of the King is that "He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses—no, he only had one. He had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet bags."(Page 120) This impression The two of them go on to make up stories how one is actually the Duke of Bridgewater and that the other is the rightful King of France. Huck later comments that "It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds."(Page 125) The next day, the Duke and the King go into the town of Pokesville, where they go to a town meeting in the woods. The King tells the people at the meeting that he is an ex-pirate of the Indian Ocean who has found his true path and wants to dedicate his life to converting other pirates to this true path of life.

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