Chaps 1-4: 1st episode "Papa Returns"

                      Themes 
Superstition - when he kills the spider and his pa comes back
gullibility- when the gang charges after Sunday school kids believing that the elephants and the a-rabs.
The role of the outsider- when the lady teaches Huck about praying
                 
  allusions

bible- moses
Arabian nights
Don Quixote


                      characters
Aunt Polly, Mary, Widow Douglas, tom, Judge Thatcher, Huck, pap, Tommy Barnes, miss Watson, Joe Harper, Ben Rogers, Jim

                     part of plot
exposition

                   summary
In this episode Huck gets adopted by Widow Douglas and she tries to teach Huck about manners and how to be polite.  She tries to tame him.  She also teaches him about the bible and how praying will help him.  Huck doesn't understand how praying will help him. He prays for a fishing pole and hooks and gets the pole but not the hooks and gets mad.  Then Huck meets up with Tom Sawyer and the two start a gang with Tommy, Joe Harper, and Ben Rogers.  They decide they are going to go rob a group of a-rabs that have elephants and camels that are stocked with diamonds.  Huck decides to go because he wants to see an elephant, but when they get there there is no one there but Sunday School kids.  So they decide to rob the Sunday school kids, and then they get yelled at by the teachers.  Then Huck asks Tom where the elephants and the A-rabs were, and Tom said they were there but they were cloaked by wizards.  Which just means that Tom was using his imagination where Huck was not as educated as him and didn't know what imagination was.  After that robbery the gang decided not to be a gang anymore.  Then Huck a few days later goes outside and finds footsteps that are his father's footsteps, and then Huck runs down and tells Judge Thatcher that he wants him to have all his money.  And he gives Judge Thatcher $6,000, but Judge Thatcher doesn't truly take the money but tells Huck he does.  Huck goes to Jim and asks Jim to have the hairball tell Jim Huck's future.  The hairball tells Huck complete nonsense, except he tells Huck to stay away from water.  Which is a foreshadow to a later chapter when Huck gets on the raft and sails the Mississippi River.  Then Huck finds out his papa isn't dead, and he is sitting in Huck's room.