CHAPTER 19 Practice Quiz — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: CHAPTER 19
How do Huck and Jim travel to avoid detection?
They travel at night and hide during the day, tying up the raft under tow-heads and covering it with cut cottonwoods and willows.
What do Huck and Jim do during the daytime while hiding?
They set fishing lines, swim to cool off, watch the daylight come, cook breakfast, and then laze around and sleep.
How does Huck encounter the two men who become the duke and king?
While paddling up a creek in a canoe to look for berries, Huck meets two men running along a cow-path, fleeing from townspeople with dogs.
How does Huck help the two fleeing men escape their pursuers?
He tells them to crowd through the brush, get up the creek, then wade through the water back to him to throw the dogs off the scent.
Why was the younger con man being chased?
He had been selling a product to remove tartar from teeth that also stripped the enamel, and stayed one night too long in town.
Why was the older con man being chased?
He had been running a temperance revival but was exposed for secretly drinking from a private jug. The townspeople planned to tar and feather him.
What does the younger man claim his true identity is?
He claims to be the rightful Duke of Bridgewater, descended from an English duke whose title was seized by a younger branch of the family.
What does the older man claim his true identity is?
He claims to be the lost Dauphin of France, the son of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
How does Huck respond to the duke and king's royal claims?
He instantly recognizes them as low-down humbugs and frauds but keeps quiet and plays along to avoid quarrels and keep peace on the raft.
How does Jim respond to the duke and king's claims?
Jim is credulous and sympathetic. His eyes bug out, he pities them, bows to the duke, calls him "Your Grace," kneels to the king, and calls him "Your Majesty."
What occupations does the younger con man list as his trades?
Journeyman printer, patent medicine seller, theater actor (tragedy), mesmerist, phrenologist, singing-geography teacher, and lecturer.
What occupations does the older con man list as his specialties?
Doctoring (laying on of hands for cancer and paralysis), fortune telling, preaching, working camp meetings, and missionary work.
What does Huck say he learned from his Pap about dealing with people like the duke and king?
The best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.
What does the raft symbolize in the opening of Chapter 19?
The raft symbolizes freedom, natural beauty, and a sanctuary from the corruption and restrictions of shore society.
How does the arrival of the duke and king relate to the theme of civilization versus freedom?
Their arrival represents the intrusion of shore society's corruption and dishonesty into the peaceful, free world of the raft.
What does the duke and king's escalating competition in fake identities satirize?
It satirizes class pretension and social hierarchy, mocking how society values titles and aristocratic claims over actual character and merit.
What literary technique does Twain use in the famous dawn passage at the beginning of Chapter 19?
Extended imagery using rich sensory details (sight, sound, smell) with vernacular narration to create a lyrical, almost poetic description of the natural world.
What is the dramatic irony in Chapter 19?
The reader and Huck both see through the duke and king's transparent lies about being royalty, while Jim genuinely believes them and treats them accordingly.
How does Twain use burlesque in the duke and king's performances?
The con men's melodramatic sighing, weeping, and grandiose language ("the secret of my birth") exaggerate romantic literary conventions to comic effect.
What do Huck and Jim discuss when looking at the stars?
They debate whether the stars were made or just happened. Jim says the moon could have laid them; Huck finds this reasonable since he has seen a frog lay nearly as many.