My favorite part of Huck Finn is when the Duke and Dauphen scam the Wilks family. It is not for the plot, but for the character development. Although it is quite unfortunate for the two Wilk girls, the amount of insight it gives the readers into the characters is astounding.
The Duke and dauphin are two greedy scam artists, but are also amazing psychologists. They utilize the selfishness of humanity to con a whole town to watch their terrible nonesuch play. The townspeople want others to share their miserable fate and are too embarrassed to admit they got tricked. Later, they utilize the weak period after a loss to scam the two Wilk girls of Peter Wilk’s inheritance. Whether it be luck or all planned, both are quite a feat to pull off.
Huck is another character that becomes more developed in this scene. Some may say he fell in love with Mary Jane and other may say he just felt guilty, but he undoubtedly attempted to foil the Duke’s plan. He was fine lying to people along the river to gather information and some food, but he felt that this went too far. Later, when Huck finds out that Jim was handed over to a local farmer, he rips up the letter he was about to send to Miss Watson of Jim’s location. He said he would rather go to hell, this shows his dedication to Jim’s freedom and that he values Jim as a close friend, perhaps as a family member as well.
This scene is also one of my favorite scenes in the novel. I agree with you that there are many character developments in the scene. Huck finally refuses to do wrong things; moreover, he eventually makes up his mind to help Jim.
This is a great analysis about the Duke and King. We learn how masterfully manupulating they can be. Perhaps their stunt of casuing a town to disperse false information, connotates to the role the media plays in our lives, espically during the antabellum era.
This scene was a great way to contrast society from Huck. We see a lot of character development and how Huck develops through meeting different people and seeing different things throughout his journey. The Duke and Dauphin scene showed how easy it was to fool society within the novel. Society immediately label them as noble when they saw their appearance and speech. They did not further question their identity but instead trust them completely, thinking that they were of noble families. This easily allowed the Duke and Dauphin to take advantage and scam the people. In general this showed that society labeled one through their mere appearance and not by their actions/ thoughts.