The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Quotes

Context

This line is from the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), written by Mark Twain.

The major plotline of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Jim's escape from slavery and Huck's moral dilemma about whether he should help Jim escape (which is where his conscience leads him) or turn him in (as the law says he should). While the book is full of Twain's trademark humor, it's heavy stuff.

Enter Tom Sawyer with the comic relief. Toward the end of the novel, Jim and Huck end up at the home of Silas and Sally Phelps, who happen to be Tom's aunt and uncle. The Phelpses discover that Jim is a runaway and plan to hold him for his owner.

Tom shows up, and he and Huck hatch a plan to help Jim escape. But because this is Tom Sawyer, he has to make things a lot harder than they should be. Taking their cue from sensational novels, Tom and Huck make Jim's prison really rough by filling it with spiders, snakes, and rats. So he can pull off a really daring escape, Tom writes letters to the Phelpses posing as a member of a gang of desperadoes who plan to steal Jim. In one of these fake letters, he writes, "I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing."

The irony is that Tom has no intention of doing the right thing. In fact, he's doing exactly the wrong thing by making Jim's life rougher than it has to be and setting everyone up for a shootout when he could have just unlocked the shed door. But that's Tom Sawyer for you.

Where you've heard it

This isn't one of those lines that gets dropped a lot, so you might not have heard it anywhere but in the book. People do say this sometimes, but usually they're being serious, whereas Tom is just playing a part.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

You're going to sound a little pretentious if you say you want the rewards of a clean conscience rather than the rewards of the reward money. Wouldn't it be best to have both? However, if you're joking around because you know you're doing the exact wrong thing, that will drop your P-factor a bit.