ABSTRACT
Looking back from the vantage point that Twain reached at the end of A Double Barrelled Detective Story, Twain made a wise choice with regard to the plot of Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn, Twain seems to have hoped to achieve what Double Barrelled would later prove him incapable of, seeking to develop a plot around trailing Pap's signature footprints. The Oedipal relationship between Pap and Huck can also be seen in Pap's fear of the dead and his terror of their pursuit of him. Considering Twain's obsessive return to these ghostly chases between fathers and sons whose goal is the fathers' death, another chase, preceding by only a few pages the deadly chase between Dick and Charles Allbright, seems to bear more significance than meets the eye the chase between Huck and Jim in the fog. It seems actually the curse of the slain snake that traps Huck in the fog and makes him so desperately pursue Jim.
