Question

"Henry the Eight…used to marry a new wife every day, and chop her head off next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs…. And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book….Well, Henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country…. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence…. That was his style…. That’s the kind of bug Henry was; and if we’d a had him along ’stead of our kings, he’d a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done." In at least one hundred words, does Huck believe that the information he gives is true? What purpose does this excerpt serve in the story?

Answer 1

Answer:

Huck seems indifferent to his own claim about the kings of the past and the present, their companion "king" included.

But in giving the story of Henry VIII to Jim, he meant to show that all kings are the same, be it past or present, real or fake king.

Explanation:

When Huck told Jim about Henry VIII in Chapter 23 of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", he did not seem to really believe it. But there is also no proof of his own disbelief of the story either. According to him, there is no such real difference in the kings of the past and the 'king' who's their companion.

In his description of Henry VIII, Huck seems to have a mild idea of many stories which he composed into one tale. He attributes Henry VIII with that of the king in the stories of One Thousand Nights, the historical Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. There is no such demarcation of story and history for him.

But whatever that may be, his claim seems to be that he wants to show how almost everyone, be it the kings of the past and the one they have as a companion, are all the same. Some lines after this passage, he said "What was the use to tell Jim these warn’t real kings and dukes? It wouldn’t a done no good; and, besides, it was just as I said: you couldn’t tell them from the real kind."