THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, by Mark Twain, talks about the journey of Huckleberry Finn and Miss Watson’s nigger, Jim, across several states. Huckleberry Finn gets kidnapped by his drunk Pap but manages to fake his death and escape to Jackson’s Island. Jim also goes there, as he doesn’t want to be sold by Miss Watson and separated from his family. Jim wants to go to Cairo, a free area, so Huck volunteers to help him. They travel by raft across many areas and have many adventures. The king and the duke join the party, but Huck and Jim find them evil and selfish. One day, Huck finds Jim taken away and bought by the family of Silas Phelps. He manages to escape the king and the duke by saying that he was going to find Jim. Silas Phelps is actually the uncle of Tom Sawyer, and Huck and Tom work together to help Jim escape and become a free man.
The Duke and King, the two charlatans of the story, have done a good many tricks in town and shows the steps and factors that helped them succeed in that scam. One example is in a little town, where the King pretends to be a reformed pirate who promises to bring Christianity to other pirates if he has enough money; therefore, many donate to him. However, all this touching amounts of nonsense blabbering were of course just a way to trick the people into donating to the King. In this scene, the King uses the important factor of ‘settling where the crowd is’, meaning that he put use to his scheme where everyone were, so that he can get more money from more people. When he gets to the town, he finds that no one is around, so he asks a nigger for information. The nigger says that everyone went to the religious revival camp-meeting. The King takes advantage of this and goes there to scam everyone. The next part of tricking the community was easy enough for the King: he unlocked his ‘sweet and friendly mode’, moving everyone in church and convincing them to donate to him. In the first trick the King plans, he uses takes advantage of the religious meeting and the fact that the townspeople are relatively easy to move.
The two charlatans have also attempted and barely succeeded in other trick and scam of theirs in a small town. They scammed many people for a Shakespeare show that was five minutes long and escaped with their nearly five hundred dollars earning. The most important part of this trick was the King’s advertisement that created interest of many townspeople. The advertisement he wrote on the papers said: “AT THE COURT HOUSE! FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY! The World-Renowned Tragedians DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER! AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER! Of the London and Continental Theatres, In their Trilling Tragedy of THE KING’S CAMELOPARD OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH!!! Admission 50 cents. LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.” The phrases ‘3 nights only’, ‘the world-renowned tragedians’, and especially ‘ladies and children not admitted’ created curiosity and interest of the townspeople. The trick also only worked because of the Duke and King’s cleverness. They knew that the first and second audiences would go for them only during the third night, so they ran away during the third night. In this scam and fraud, the Duke and King used the two factors of gathering people’s interest and interpretation.
The Duke and King’s biggest crime and fraud was when they attempted to trick the Wilks family. Their main plan was to trick the townspeople and the Wilks daughters into thinking that they were their uncles, so that the frauds can take the money inherited from Peter Wilks and run away. This was yet another easy scam and fraud to the Duke and King, as townspeople are significantly easy to scam and lie to. The starting step of performing this fraud was by gathering information from the boy the king gave a lift to. Here, the king was quite clever while squeezing all the Wilks information out of the poor boy, as he was doing a favor (giving the boy a lift) for the boy, so the boy would unhesitantly tell him everything he can. After sending the boy off, the Duke and King came to the point where they would have to trick the townspeople. The King handled that part by being ever so kind and friendly to everyone and so generous to the Wilks daughters, treating them like his real nieces. Then, the Duke and King had to make everyone the least suspicious of them, by hiding some of their own earning into the bag of money and substituting it for the missing money. The King and Duke mainly completed the whole Wilks family scam by showing warm-hearted generosity to everyone.
In THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Huck and Jim go on various adventures until they meet the two charlatans, the Duke and King, who create many tricks to scam people and their money. In one small town, the King pretends to be a reformed pirate who could reform other pirates with donation, therefore many people donate. In this trick, the King takes advantage of the religious meeting where all the townspeople go to perform his act and receiving more money from more people. Then, the two charlatans scam the townspeople’s money with a show that is five minutes long. Here, the Duke and King uses the factor of advertisement to lure people into the show. The biggest trick of theirs was scamming the Wilks family and pretending to be Harvey and Williams to get the money from Peter Wilks. They trick everyone into believing that they are the brothers of Wilks by gathering enough information and being all kind and friendly and generous and all. The two charlatans have succeeded in their scams - or parts of their scams - using different factors that help them trick people.
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