Plot Summary
In Chapter 39 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Tom Sawyer collect the remaining creatures needed for their elaborate escape scheme. They buy a wire rat trap in the village and catch fifteen rats, but Aunt Sally's young son, Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps, opens the trap and releases them all. Aunt Sally beats the boys with a hickory switch, and they must spend two more hours catching a second, inferior batch of rats.
The boys also gather spiders, bugs, frogs, caterpillars, and two dozen garter and house snakes, all of which escape from a poorly tied bag into the house. The snakes infest every corner of the home, dripping from rafters and landing in plates and down necks. Aunt Sally, who despises snakes, is driven nearly out of her mind; even weeks after the last snake disappears, she jumps at the slightest touch. Meanwhile, Jim's cabin becomes impossibly crowded with rats, snakes, spiders, and the grindstone, leaving him virtually no room to sleep and prompting him to declare he would never be a prisoner again, not even for a salary.
Character Development
This chapter deepens the contrast between Tom's romantic adventurism and Huck's practical nature. When Tom insists on writing "nonnamous letters" to warn the Phelps family that an escape is imminent, Huck sensibly objects: "Let them find it out for themselves—it's their lookout." Tom dismisses this logic, arguing that without interference the escape "won't amount to nothing." Tom also assigns roles from adventure novels—Huck must dress as a servant girl and Tom will pose as Jim's mother—though he conveniently redesigns the plan so he does not actually have to stay behind in the cabin.
Themes and Motifs
intensifies his satire of literary romanticism in this chapter. Tom's insistence on following the conventions of European adventure stories—anonymous warnings, servant-girl disguises, and references to Louis XVI's attempted flight from the Tuileries—produces real suffering for Jim, Aunt Sally, and the entire Phelps household. The chapter also underscores the cruelty embedded in Tom's game: the anonymous letters deliberately terrify a kind family, and Jim endures sleepless nights surrounded by vermin for the sake of Tom's theatrical vision of a proper escape.
Literary Devices
employs hyperbole and comic imagery throughout, particularly in the extended description of snakes overrunning the house and Aunt Sally's exaggerated reactions. Huck's deadpan narration—calling it "a rattling good honest day's work" after collecting vermin all day—creates dramatic irony, as readers understand the absurdity that the narrator reports so matter-of-factly. The anonymous letters themselves function as a device of dramatic irony: the reader knows the "desprate gang of cutthroats" described in the final letter is entirely fictional, invented by two boys, while the terrified Phelps family takes the threats seriously.