Comparing and Contrasting Tom and Huck
In Mark Twain?s novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the main character, Tom, is best friends with Huck. Tom and Huck seem very similar. But of course, everyone has their differences. They both have many freedoms and experiences, which differ. Their friendship means different things to each kid. There is also the factor of experience and intelligence. The boys are similar and different in many ways, but I think that it does not effect their friendship.
Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are different in a couple ways. While on an adventure, Tom is usually the leader and Huck follows. Tom thinks in creative and crazy ways. But Huck is very straight forward, sometimes literally minded. The boys were also raised differently. Huck had nobody to l...
Jim and Huck’s friendship evolves throughout the novel and Huck changes the way he treats Jim. Huck started off this novel by playing practical jokes on Jim with Tom Sawyer. Huck was taught that there is nothing wrong with mistreating blacks. After journeying down the Mississippi river with Jim Huck knows he can’t always listen to society.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain paints the story of a developing friendship between two entirely different people which at the time society considered unacceptable and taboo. Huckleberry Finn is a white thirteen year old boy and Jim is a middle-aged black runaway slave. They meet by coincidence while they are both hiding out on Jackson’s Island located in the middle of the Mississippi River, Huck is hiding from the townspeople who think he is dead, and Jim has runaway and is hiding from his owner. Throughout their journey together, Huck and Jim’s relationship goes from them being mere acquaintances, then to friends, then to them having a father and son relationship.
Huckleberry Finn’s conscience and morality about regarding Jim as a friend changes throughout the novel as their bond with each other increases. In most parts of the story,Huck has internal conflict about whether or not he should turn Jim in,but Huck keeps thinking about how bad he would feel afterward. In chapter 8,Huck finds that Jim is a runaway. Jim explains to Huck that he overheard Miss.Watson talking about how she was going to sell Jim to a slave trader in New Orleans for $800 which would separate Jim from his family. Plus,he and Jim are traveling together for the same reason;freedom. Huck is escaping his own home life from the Widow Douglas and his abusive father believing that they're keeping him from being who he wants to be.
Mark Twain tells the story of Huckleberry Finn, and his maturity that is developed through a series of events. This maturity is encouraged through the developing relationship between Huck and Jim, as well as the strong influence Jim has on Huck. Jim's influence not only effects Huck's maturity, but his moral reasoning; and the influence society has on Huck. Jim is Huck's role model; even though Huck would not admit it. At first Jim seems to portray a Black stereotypical role with his superstitions and ignorance, although his true identity and maternal role begins to shine through as his interactions with Huck progress.
At the beginning of each of the tales both Odysseus and Huck are being held against their will, they manage to escape their initial surroundings but end up getting trapped again later on. As previously mentioned, at the beginning of Odysseus’s tale he is being held captive by Calypso on her Isle because she wants to make him her husband, and although this scene is highly comparable to Pap holding Huck captive on an island for money, it can also be compared to the beginning of Huck’s tale when he is living with Widow Douglas. 2She took me in for a son, and allowed she would civilize me.” (Twain, Page 1.) The two women that are holding the heroes hostage have similar reasoning’s behind them and both would be huge lifestyle changes for the characters, Calypso wants to marry Odysseus and in a similar way Widow Douglas wants to tie Huck down and civilize him. Just as Odysseus shows his yearning for freedom to Hermes, Huck shows his wish to escape and his longing for freedom when he says “when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.” (Twain, page 1.)
With prior friendships being mainly those of Tom Sawyer and misguided children of a “gang”, the concept of the nature of a friendship was misconstrued. Jim’s friendship taught him the importance of unconditional love, and having a friends back no matter what. Jim refers to Huck as the “best friend that old Jim ever had in the world” (214). This resonates with Huck and when tempted to write a letter to Miss Watson to expose Jim’s whereabouts, he recalls his relationship with Jim. He remembers the level of trust that has been created between the two of them, and how close their journey to freedom has brought them.
The first eleven chapters of Adventures establish Huck's character prior to his journey on the river with Jim. Dealing with external difficulty is easy for Huck, as he consistently adapts to his environments; however, his actions contradict his desires, revealing that Huck is conflicted.
Continuing what he had started in the first eleven chapters, Twain further develops Huck Finn's character through a series of events where Huck's decisions indicate his moral struggle. Adventures shows the dynamic movement of Huck's internal difficulty, illustrating his conflicted nature.
The reader will find Huck and Jim more knowledgeable at the conclusion of the novel, and notice their love for life and for each other.After reading the novel and watching the Disney film Huck Finn, one will find many dissimilarities. Many of the classic scenes have been switched around and combined in the 1993 version. There are a few scenes in particular that I will focus and comment on.The major difference between the movie and the book is an important character named Tom Sawyer, who is not present or mentioned in the film. It is evident from reading the story that Tom was a dominant influence on Huck, who obviously adores him. Tom can be seen as Huck's leader and role model. He has a good family life, but yet has the free will to run off and have fun.
also says that each of the wives would tell the king a story and he
Further from the banks of the Mississippi was Hannibal. Hannibal was a fine place to raise children. There were many places to go with fun things for young boys to do. Twain let his imagination go when he went to places like Holliday’s Hill and the caves close to the summit, where he may have played pirates just like Huck. A close friend of Clemens was Tom Blankenship, the son of the village drunkard, who was to be immortalized years later as Huck’s friend Tom Sawyer (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Tom Sawyer is Huck Finn’s best friend in the book. Tom freely invents lies and loves adventure, just as Tom Blankenship did.
Huck Finn learns from the actions of people around him, what kind of a person he is going to be. He is both part of the society and an outlier of society, and as such he is given the opportunity to make his own decisions about what is right and what is wrong. There are two main groups of characters that help Huck on his journey to moral maturation. The first group consists of Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and the judge. They portray society and strict adherence to rules laid out by authority. The second group consists of Pap, the King, and the Duke. They represent outliers of society who have chosen to alienate themselves from civilized life and follow no rules. While these characters all extremely important in Huck’s moral development, perhaps the most significant character is Jim, who is both a fatherly figure to Huck as well as his parallel as far as limited power and desire to escape. Even though by the end of the novel, Huck still does not want to be a part of society, he has made a many choices for himself concerning morality. Because Huck is allowed to live a civilized life with the Widow Douglas, he is not alienated like his father, who effectively hates civilization because he cannot be a part of it. He is not treated like a total outsider and does not feel ignorant or left behind. On the other hand, because he does not start out being a true member of the society, he is able to think for himself and dismiss the rules authority figures say are correct. By the end of the novel, Huck is no longer a slave to the rules of authority, nor is he an ignorant outsider who looks out only for himself. This shows Huck’s moral and psychological development, rendering the description of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as a picaresq...
There is always a need for a minority voice, a figure capable of conveying to the masses about the injustices faced by minorities. Occurring more than commonly thought, this figure tends to be part of the reigning majority. This issue, with the addition of several others, is introduced in Mark Twain 's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a sequel to his book about the mischievous Tom Sawyer. In the novel, Huckleberry Finn and the runway slave Jim, find themselves both escaping the people who control their lives and their choices. As the mere acquaintances ' relationship suddenly transforms into friendship, Huck 's opinions about Jim greatly differ from what he was raised to believed. Jim 's humanistic characteristics, Huck and Jim
In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain a young boy by the name of Huckleberry Finn learns what life is like growing up in Missouri. The story follows young Huckleberry as he floats down the Mississippi River on his raft. On his journey he is accompanied by his friend Jim, a runaway slave. Throughout this novel Huckleberry Finn is influenced by a number of people he meets along the way. Huckleberry Finn was brought up in an interesting household. His father was rarely ever home and if he was, he was drunk, his mother had passed away so Huck had no one to really look out for him or take care of him. Huckleberry had the life that many teenagers dream of, no parents to watch you or tell you what to do, but when Huckleberry finds himself in the care of Widow Douglas and Miss Watson things start to drastically change. Widow Douglas and Miss Watson are two relatively old women and think that raising a child means turning him into an adult. In order for Huckleberry to become a young man, he was required to attend school, religion was forced upon him, and a behavior that was highly unlike Huck became what was expected of him by the older ladies. Not to long after moving in, Huckleberry ran away. When he finally came home he respected the ladies wishes and did what they wanted, but was never happy with it. When Tom Sawyer enters the picture, he is the immediate apple of Huckleberry's eye. Huckleberry sees Tom as the person that he used to be and was envious of Tom's life. Huckleberry saw freedom and adventure in this young man and soon became very close friends with him. Huck then joins Tom's little "group" to feel that sense of belonging and adventure that he misses out on due to living with the two older ladies. Soon enough Huck realizes that all of Tom's stories are a little exagerated and that his promises of adventure really are not that adventurous. Tom gives Huckleberry a false sense of excitement and eventually Huck leaves Tom's gang. Later on Huckleberry 's father, Pap, enters the story and tries to change everything about Huckleberry that the two women have taught him.
Huck and Jim have a strange relationship, but they each gave what the other needed in a friend. Jim missed his wife and children he had been separated from due to them being sold to separate slave owners, and Huck gave him someone to take care of and be close to, like he would be with his flesh and blood child. Huck had an alcoholic and abusive father, and Jim, even though society told them he was beneath his white friend, gave Huck a strong male figure he could look up to. The bond between the two main characters in Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was not socially acceptable at that time, but their friendship proves that the special bond between people is blind to age, color, gender, social class, disabilities, etc.