This document provides an overview of other important characters in Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It summarizes the roles and significance of Tom Sawyer, Pap Finn, the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, the King and the Duke, the Grangerfords family, the Phelps family including Aunt Sally and Reverend Silas, and several other minor characters including Colonel Sherburn and the Wilks sisters. The summaries highlight how these characters further Twain's themes of satirizing society and the hypocrisy of the time, as well as their impact on the stories of Huck and Jim.

1. HUCK FINN: OTHER
CHARACTERS
Tom Sawyer; Pap;TheWidow Douglass & Miss Watson;The
King and the Duke;The Grangerfords;The Phelps, and the
Loftus sisters

2. Tom Sawyer -
■ He appears at the beginning of the novel, when Huck is suffering from the civilizing
influence of life with theWidow Douglas, and at the end, whenTom arrives at the
home of his Aunt Sally Phelps and assumes the identity of his brother, Sid.In both
instancesTom exhibits the active imagination and flamboyance readers of the earlier
novel were familiar with.
■ His appetite for romantic literature—a frequent target ofTwain's satire—is as much in
evidence in Huckleberry Finn as it was in Tom Sawyer, though its consequences prove
more dire.
■ He is established as an integral, accepted and generally accepting part of the society in
which he lived. Huck, who is isolated from society in both books, in his common sense
and practicality he contrasts withTom.
■ Tom's childish romanticism in Huckleberry Finn is considered arrogant, pretentious,
and ultimately hurtful

3. More aboutTom and the end of the novel
■ Tom's reappearance near the end of Huckleberry Finn has generated a great deal of controversy in
the years since the book's publication.
■ Many critics claim his elaborate, ridiculous plan to free Jim, though it may be an entertaining,
farcical parody of conventional romantic literature, mars the novel's overall effect.
– These commentators maintain that the profound themes evoked by Huck's andJim's quest, and
particularly the issue of slavery, are undermined by the burlesque tone of the final chapters.
■ Other scholars, however, contend thatTom's appearance at the end of the novel makes formal
sense, providing the story with a circular structure.
– Tom seems grievously unconcerned about the physical and psychological toll his silly antics
might take onJim, who goes along with the scheme with remarkable patience.
– Tom's thoughtlessness (some critics even label it cruelty) is compounded by the fact that he
knows all along that MissWatson has already freedJim. Huck is initially surprised thatTom,
whose true conventionality he seems to sense, is willing to go against the law to help him free
Jim; when he later learns the reason forTom's carefree attitude, he understands “how he could
help a body set a nigger free with his bringing up.”

4. Pap: Mean, abusive, and resentful, Pap is an inadequate father whose
tyranny over Huck provides the immediate motivation for his flight.
■ Pay attention to his monologue on the follies of the “govment’ and his tirade
addressing the ‘free black man,’ which illuminates his ignorance and
inhumanity as well as the attitude of many Southerners toward blacks.
■ Pap begrudges Huck the advantages he has recently acquired, including his
education, and accuses his son of “putting on frills” and trying to appear
superior to his father.
■ Several critics have identified Pap's role in the novel as illuminating the
conditions of Huck's upbringing, the obstacles against which he must struggle,
and his need for the surrogate father some say he finds in Jim.
■ Pap symbolizes the uniquely American type of the alienated, frustrated
backwoods squatter. His portrayal shows a darker side of isolation from
society.

5. Widow Douglass & MissWatson:
■ Widow Douglas, who took Huck in at the end of Tom Sawyer with the intention of
“sivilizing” him
– The pious, highly respectable widow is essentially kindhearted, hospitable, and
generous. In taking responsibility for the virtually parentless Huck, she shows her
willingness to give her Christian principles tangible expression.
■ MissWatson, is a strict Calvinist whose concept of Christianity seems harsh and
unforgiving.
– The fact that she owns Jim demonstrates her hypocrisy as well as the type of person
Twain had contempt for—those who proclaim their religious convictions while
overlooking or even perpetuating injustice and inhumanity.
– MissWatson's greed and inability to viewJim as a human being are apparent when
she succumbs to a slave trader's offer of eight hundred dollars forJim.

6. The King and the Duke: Twain uses them to lampoon the
pretension to nobility that was one of his favorite satirical targets.
■ The “Duke of Bridgewater,”(Bilgewater) about thirty years old, describes himself as a printer
whose royal title was unjustly usurped; he supports himself by bilking hapless small-town residents
into buying quack remedies, such as a formula that removes tartar from teeth, as promised, but
also the enamel.
■ “King Looey the Seventeenth” is about seventy years old and adept at a variety of scams, including
fake temperance revivals.
■ Used to parody the notion of false aristocracy and the equally reprehensible brutishness of
America's lower classes, a cross-section of which is described during the group's travels through
several riverside communities.
■ Huck is well aware of these scoundrels' true characters but for a time goes along with them; he
exposes them, however, when their scheming threatens theWilks sisters.
■ Even though the King and Duke are ultimately responsible for Jim's capture, Huck feels sorry for
them when they are tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail, for he is also aware of the
cruelty in human nature.

7. the Grangerfords, fancy themselves aristocrats and through
whomTwain satirizes the kind of Southern romantic tradition he abhorred.
■ The true lack of content beneath the family's adherence to established forms is evident in their
tastelessly decorated home, their obviously shallow grief for a deceased daughter, and their
exaggerated allegiance to etiquette.
■ One of the book's most comic moments is provided by the poem memorializing “Stephen Dowling
Bots,” written by Emmeline Grangerford, who died at fifteen after penning a number of morbidly
sentimental poems that Huck, revealing his naiveté, much admires.
■ The most significant aspect of the Grangerfords' lives, however, is their longstanding, senseless feud
with the neighboring Shepherdson family.
■ Bound by a rigid and clearly false code of “honor” based on a repeated, primitive pattern of
retribution, the two families regularly murder each other in cold blood despite the fact that no one
remembers why the feud started.
■ When a young Grangerford girl and a Shepherdson boy fall in love and elope—providing a backwoods
American version of “Romeo and Juliet“—the result is a vicious battle in which all of the Grangerford
males (including Huck's friend Buck) and all but two or three of the Shepherdsons are killed.

8. The Phelps (Reverend Silas and Sally) -Tom Sawyer's aunt and
uncle, though Huck is initially unaware of this when he arrives at their farm,
where the captured Jim is being held
■ The Phelpses embody the solidly middle-class values of cleanliness, good manners,
and propriety, yet they see nothing wrong with the institution of slavery.
■ Their practice of having their slaves in each evening for Bible readings and prayers
provides another example ofTwain's distrust of conventional religion.
■ It is Aunt Sally who makes the often-quoted remark, when Huck tells her that no one
was hurt in a steamboat accident, though a black person dies “Well, it's lucky;
because sometimes people do get killed.” Aunt Sally's interest in adopting Huck
provokes his final comment that he may have to “light out” for the territories in
order to avoid her “sivilizing” influence.

9. Other characters of some importance
■ Colonel Sherburn, a well-dressed, self-possessed Southern aristocrat of Bricksville,
■ When his considerable pride was injured by an obnoxious but harmless drunk named Boggs,
Sherburn coldly kills the man.
■ A mob of Sherburn's fellow townsfolk later arrives at his house with the ostensible intention of
lynching him, but he confronts them directly and delivers an acid monologue on the cowardice of the
average human being and the mob mentality, scoffing at the idea that such as they are capable of
killing him.
■ Judith Loftus, from whom Huck, ineffectually disguised as a girl, derives information about the
reaction to his and Jim's disappearance.
■ Sisters Mary Jane, Susan, and JoannaWilks are nearly cheated out of their inheritance by the
conniving King and Duke, but Mary Jane so charms Huck with her kindness that he helps the sisters.
■ Aunt Polly, (Tom’s aunt) – sentimental and pious
■ JudgeThatcher, the eminently respectable symbol of justice who safeguards Huck's fortune,
managing through legal maneuvers to keep it away from Pap Finn. (ContrastThatcher to the ‘new’
judge.)