In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck stays with the Grangerfords, then travels with two frauds, then wanders a river town, and moves on each time. Which plot structure does this describe?

Huck travels down the Mississippi, and each new stop brings different people and new trouble. In Twain's novel, what mainly holds these separate episodes together?

Twain ends Huck's stay with the Grangerfords like this: "I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp." What does this closing do for the plot?

In Twain's novel Huck says, "It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her." How does this episode begin?

In Twain's novel, Huck slips into a circus in a river town, enjoys the show, and leaves. Nothing at the circus changes what happens afterwards. What does this tell you about the episode?

Huck's circus visit could be cut and the story would still work, yet Twain keeps it. In an episodic plot, what does an episode like this mainly add?

In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Grangerford feud is what causes the duke and the king to join Huck on the raft.

On the river Huck says, "It's lovely to live on a raft." Between the shore episodes, Twain keeps returning to the raft. What does the raft do for the novel's structure?

Twain writes, "as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft." Huck then swims ashore and finds a new household. What is this moment?

Twain writes, "First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on." More short village schemes follow. What does this run of scenes show?

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn moves from one self-contained stop to the next. What does this episodic structure cost the novel?

Huck's last words in Twain's novel include, "I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest". How does this ending fit an episodic plot?

Besides Huck himself, what recurring concern runs through the shore episodes of Twain's novel and helps hold them together?

In Twain's novel, which event starts Huck's trip down the river and so sets up all the episodes that follow?

Late in Twain's novel the king sells Jim, so Huck must go to the Phelps farm to find him. Why is this episode unlike the circus visit?

In Twain's novel most shore episodes end the same way: Huck slips off and the raft moves downriver again. What does repeating this closing do?

Twain closes the wrecked-steamboat episode: "we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people." What does this closing tell the reader?

Twain writes, "The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing off every which way". A few lines later Huck is at a circus. What does this show about the episodes?

Huck says of the duke and the king, "these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds." What do these two travelers do for the plot's structure?

A reader wants to test whether Twain's novel really has an episodic plot. Which test works best?