Event+from+the+Book

__Chapter 9 Overview__
The chapter begins with Jim and Huck nearing the center of the island of their refuge, and make a plan so as to escape easily “if anybody was to come to the island,” (50). In preparation for hiding the canoe to make an easy escape, Huck sees the water level rising, and Jim feels a storm is close. During the daytime, Huck and Jim did not come out, however at night, the two would explore the flooded island with the canoe. On one such night, just before daylight, Jim and Huck see a floating two story house. On a count of it being dark, the two decide to fasten the boat and wait for the light to shine through the house to see what’s inside. Jim found a dead man shot in the back and covered him up, while Huck looked away and loaded items into their canoe, like dresses, a bonnet, underclothes, some men’s clothes, a straw hat, a lantern, a handle-less butcher knife, Barlow knife, and well as many other necessities for life in seclusion. After raiding the house, Huck and a covered-up Jim make it back to the island safely with plentiful supplies.

__Analysis__
In chapter nine, we are given a look at **human nature** at its finest – //what we eventually resort to in times of disaster//. We often exhibit a combination of inquisitive and selfish behavior that can result in drastic results. If Huck had not told us “Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island,” (50), then the reader might have assumed that the two were preparing for the oncoming storm, unless informed otherwise. This is another type of human behavior – humans prepare in order to salvage and protect themselves and their belongings with little or no damage or loss.

When we read Huck and Jim going into the house in the river, we see the results of looting and murder that people can resort to in disasters. Evidence in theft lies in the bedroom where Huck saw that, “there was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke…there warn’t nothing left in them…we reckoned the people left in a hurry,” (53). Alongside apparent larceny was apparent homicide – the nude dead man on the floor had “ben shot in de back,” (53).

After seeing the dead man, the two go rummaging through the house and take things, such as a “butcher knife, Barlow knife, tallow candles, candlestick, gourd, tin cup, quilt, hatchet, nails, fish line, and medicine,” (53), all of which would help in the progression of further life. Looting results from the public wanting goods that have either skyrocketed in stores or are no longer available; this can also result from chances of opportunity in which one can sell for total profit. Money and pseudo-necessity is the root of all evil and is the driving force for human primitive nature to surface, no matter how immoral.

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