Wonjun Koh, Michelle Kot, Romin Kershaw
In chapter XXV, the Duke and Dauphen pretend to be George and Harvey Wilks in an attempt to con the Wilks family of the late Peter Wilks’s inheritance. In the beginning of the scene, the duke is hunched over the coffin of Peter Wilks while everyone around is crying as well. By this time, the town has accepted the two con men as the two legitimate brothers of the late Peter. Shortly after, the duke and king proceed to count the gold, but the amount was about four hundred and fifteen dollars short. The two con men decided to add in their own personal money earned from their successful nonesuch play scam from the previous town. In the scene the two said,”Let’s go up stairs and count this money, and then take and give it to the girls.” This course of action is undoubtedly extremely risky for the two men. If the girls decide to keep all the money, their only way of getting the money back would be to steal it. However, from the personality of the girls that the two con men have observed, it is highly likely that they would give the money back. This also displays the amount of risk and experience of the two men have, who believe that the greater the risk, the greater the reward. By doing this, the men solidify their identities and receive the trust and admiration of the town. This scene has both aspects that deal with the #Huckcon and #gottotalking twitter theme.
Firstly, the Dauphin and duke make the Wilks believe that they are the English brothers of Peter Wilk, the deceased man, in order to get their property. When they find the money in the basement they start counting the money; Huck says that “most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on trust.” After counting the money the two find out that $415 is short of $6000, the amount that they were expecting of. This shows how meticulously they do their work, making sure they are stealing the exact amount of money they were expecting of.
In the case of the #gottotalking theme, it is seen with the act that the Dauphin and the Duke put on when they first arrived and posed as Peter’s brothers. In chapter 25 Huck says, “I never see anything so disgusting.” Huck using a word like disgusting to describe the act of the Duke and the Dauphin show how what they were doing was such a nasty thing in comparison to anything he had ever seen before. There were people who truly were sad and mourning on Peter’s death, while the Duke and the Dauphin just put on a facade for money. Huck was a young boy, and even with this fact him saying what he said about the Duke and the Dauphin’s act was a strong statement and it shows how Huck had a sense of what was right and what wasn’t.