Mohammad Jahan, Ayoub Gur, Xinli Gao
When the Duke befriends Huck and Jim, we learn how much one of his con’s co-relate to the themes of the novel. After conning a group of religious campers into funding him with 87 dollars to convert pirates into religousmen, he prints out a capture poster for Jim. The reward for his capture is $200. The real intention for this poster is to provide an alias when traveling north with Jim during the day. The duke crafted the excuse “Whenever we see anybody, we can tie Jim hand and food with a rope…and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends.”
This con incorprates a combination of themes Twain makes apparent throughout the novel. We sense of immorality toward slavery and the sympathy toward fugitive slaves. Huck reluctantly accepted Jim’s mission of traveling north for his freedom. The duke’s con supplement’s Jim’s chase for freedom by providing another layer of protection if they get caught trying to fulfill his mission.
Despite the intentions of this con, the con artist is being conned himself. Twain repeadlity lets his character uses cons throughout the book. Huck lied to the duke claiming Jim was the only member of his family alive. While that may be figuratively true, without this con, Huck does not have a plausible back story setting off with a fugitive slave. His reason to con is more for survival rather than to generate profit like the Duke. Twain may be reminding us, people are different and we can definitely lie for our own self-interest.
The language creates an interesting front Twain accidentally may have allowed to bare in mind. The rugged nature of the text lets us analyze the emotions the characters are experiencing. When Jim askes Huck, “Does you reck’n we gwyne to run acrost any mo’ kind of kings on dis trip?” we sense distate by Jim toward the Duke. However, Jim’s distaste may be figurative to con artists who target those are vulnerable.
