the cultural gulf between Twain and Dante, he claims that there is universality in both Huckleberry Finn and the Inferno, with the powerful symbol of place serving to unify the action of the story. In particular, he sees a parallel between Dante's and Twain's treatment of evil, as expressed in the ne'er-do-well characters that Jim and Huck meet on their way down river: "Huck's adventures are a progression from contact with and endangerment by incontinence, through violence, through fraud" (389). The encounter with the Duke and the Dauphin is a case in point. At first, Jim and Huck sympathize with the depths to which they say they have fallen, "majestying" them until their concern with Jim's slave status, together with their progressively worse behavior as they move down river--selling the estate and slaves of Peter Wilks, collecting a reward for turning Jim over to t
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