The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Describe the town the men find themselves in?

Chapter 21: "An Arkansaw Difficulty"

Asked by
Last updated by jill d #170087
Answers 1
Add Yours

The town was unkempt and wild, just like its residents.

All the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else but mud—mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two or three inches deep in all the places.  The hogs loafed and grunted around everywheres.  You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi!  so boy! sick him, Tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise.  Then they'd settle back again till there was a dog fight.  There couldn't anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog fight—unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.

On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. The people had moved out of them.  The bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over.  People lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time.  Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it.

Source(s)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn