The plot of the buried treasure continues to occupy Huck and Tom. Again, Tom's character stands in contrast to Huck's: Tom treats the whole adventure as a fanciful dream such as he often has. Huck however does not dream of the treasure but more realistically, he thinks of Injun Joe's killing them.
For the third time in the novel, Twain uses a thunderstorm to express the boy's fears: In the first instance, he used a storm at Jackson's Island to express the dangers and fears of the boys out camping. In the second, a rainstorm follows Tom's measles to reflect the anxieties that Tom has undergone. Here, the storm in the slaughterhouse reflects the possibility of the boys' own murders.
Twain enjoys using any occasion to make fun of hypocrites and hypocritical behavior. The Temperance Tavern, by its name, is not supposed to have any alcoholic beverages; but instead it has a large storage room filled with various types of alcoholic beverages. As Twain has often suggested, there are many people who swear temperance in church on Sunday only to follow it with a drunken spree on Monday.
Tom adheres to social mores. For example, in this chapter, while Tom enjoys Huck's company, he does not want to be seen with him in public places. Huck, outcast that he is, also exhibits this same propensity to adhere to certain mores of his time. For example, even the lowly Huck does not want it to be known around town that he has actually "set right down and eat with him [Uncle Jake, a black servant]. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when he's awfully hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." (Interestingly, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck travels down the river on a raft with the escaped slave, Jim, and risks his life--and his soul--for Jim's sake.) Readers should remember that Twain wrote in the nineteenth century when slavery still existed. Consequently, his characters conform to the prejudices of the time.
