A Contrast between Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn

陳千颯 郭漢存 （商丘學院 河南商丘 476100）

A Contrast between Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn

陳千颯 郭漢存 （商丘學院 河南商丘 476100）

Abstract:Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are the main characters in Mark Twain’s two best novels.Both boys, at the same age, are portrayed from real life; they share lots of similarities in characteristics.But on the other hand, they are different in outlooks towards the world.Tom is a dreamer, conformist, blind-follower; while Huck is a realist, rebel and real-thinker.

Key words:contrast; differences; outlook

1.Introduction

Mark Twain （1835-1910）, the greatest American realist writer, originally Samuel Langhorne Clemens, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal,Missouri.Among his works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer（1876）earned MarkTwain a reputation.It is the story about life in a boy’s world:the main characters, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, together they experienced one adventure after another along the Mississippi River and played all the games people would play in their younger days.This novel reflected Mark Twain’s concerning about his boyhood.Eight years later, Mark Twain published his another immortal novel, the sequel of the foresaid book—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn （1884）.In the book, Tom Sawyer’s best friend, Huckleberry Finn, traveled along the Mississippi River on a raft with a slave named Jim, getting himself in and out of danger along the way.This book is a masterpiece, even the great American writer Ernest Hemmingway once said about Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn:“All modern literature stems from this one book.”

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain’s two most memorable characters, are fully portrayed through their life of adventure in and out of roleplay, weaving through danger with a childish disregard for personal well-being.Through their adventures, their characteristics and personalities are revealed to the readers.And thus similarities and differences between them are depicted.

2.Similarities between Tom and Huck

Huck and Tom are one of the most famous pairs in all American literature.During the age of thirteen to fourteen, it is common that boys are naughty and indulgent in playing; Tom and Huck are no exception.They lived in the same village, shared many common traits,for example:both boys are naughty, superstitious, and love adventures.However, whatever “bad” boys they are,they also have many good traits which add more charisma to them.Among these good traits, the most eminent are kindness, braveness and cleverness.With these good traits, when they had adventures along the River, they were able to solve every problem and overcome all kinds of difficulties.With these good traits, they were able to help and save the slave Jim.And with good traits,they show us man’s courage to challenge nature.

3.Different Outlooks between Tom and Huck

（1）Dreamer vs.Realist

Huck sees and interprets the world realistically and in practical terms whereas Tom, a true romantic, believes the world operates like the stories in his books.

Tom is a dreamer, filled with imaginative schemes,but they all come from adventure stories he has read.Tom makes everything seem fancy and “high faluting”.He adds extra touches so as to give the simplest activities an air of magic.On the other hand, Huck is more realistic and understands that effort and efficiency are better than confusion and complication.A great example of their contrasting ways of thinking is in their differing approaches to rescue Jim from his imprisonment.Huck plans to simply steal the key, get Jim out, run to the canoe, and escape down the river on the raft.Huck’s plan to get Jim out of captivity is straightforward,simple, and effective.Tom, however, complains that“it’s too blame simple,” and that “there ain’t nothing to it”.Tom’s plan is complicated and full of unnecessary additions because of his stubborn adherence to the romantic scenarios that he reads in his novels.Tom believes there is “honor in getting [Jim] out through a lot of difficulties and dangers”, and he goes out of his way to invent obstacles to make the situation more difficult and more like the stories he grew upon.Huck, seeing no logic or practicality in Tom’s plan,questions the highly unnecessary notions, claiming that“it’s one of the most jackass ideas [he] ever stuck”.Huck’s realistic mind could not understand Tom’s romantic nature and he disagrees with Tom’s decisions on numerous occasions.

（2）Conformist vs.Rebel

As a member of society, Tom knows the bounds and limits of that civilized society and adheres to its rules and limitations.Of course, he is full of pranks and wild schemes, but always in the back of his mind are the rules of society which he obeys.Yet there is much in Tom that is hypocritical.For example, when he has to go into town, he makes up a reason to go alone because he does not want to be seen with the disreputable Huck whom Tom “was under strict orders not to play with”.In other words, Tom basically respects the society and its restrictions, and he is instilled by Aunt Polly with these values.At the end of Tom Sawyer, he even persuades Huck to become “respectable” by telling him “Well,everybody does that way”.Tom also convinces that to “be respectable” is the only way to join his robber gang.

In contrast to Tom, Huck is an outcast from society and conducts himself as an outcast.Rather than conforming, Huck thrives on his freedom from such restraints as the society imposes.He cannot abide by the strictures of living in a regular household where there is no smoking and no cussing and where he must wear proper clothes, keep decent hours, and conform to proper manners, especially table manners.Whereas Tom’s life is bound by society, by rules, and by acceptable behavior, Huck’s life is one of freedom; he can come and go as he pleases.

This difference between Tom and Huck is seen on Jackson’s Island.The first day on the island is one of the glorious days in their lives.But at night time, Tomand Joe, who have basically the same upbringing, have guilty consciences over stealing food for the outing, and even though they say their bedtime prayers—something Huck doesn’t bother with—their consciences will not let them get to sleep.Conversely, Huck Finn has no pangs of conscience.He feels no qualms about having lifted or borrowed certain items; he feels no compunction to live by the rules of society that has made him the outcast.

（3）Blind-follower vs.Real-thinker

Though Tom and Huck are at the same age, they have dissimilar living experiences, in particular, through Huck’s adventures down the Mississippi.Along the journey, Huck faces obstacles in adventures with Jim;he changes and becomes more mature.He is no longer the careless, prank playing boy that ran around and had fun at other people’s expense.With these experiences, he has differed from Tom in his way of thinking, in his treatment and attitude towards Jim, and in his tendency to question his surroundings.

As to their differences in way of thinking, it has been said above, Tom is a romantic, a follower, believes his fancy stories and does things in the way in his books; while Huck is a realist, solves problems in an effective way.

The second dissimilarity is up to their attitude towards Jim.After his experiences of going down the River with Jim, Huck begins to see Jim as a human being and as a close friend while Tom is still stuck in the mindset established by his southern white elders that slavery is natural.When Huck finds that the raft unoccupied and discovers that Jim is missing, he “set down and cried” because he “couldn’t help it”.Huck had never realized how much Jim meant to him until he lost him.He feels so strongly towards Jim that he would rather condemn his soul and go to hell than to see Jim in chains again.He decides “to take up wickedness again”and “go work to steal Jim out of slavery”, even though this means that he would have to go against everything he had ever known and learned.Tom is the complete opposite.Tom sees Jim only as a nigger, a being lower than human who is incapable of feelings or emotions.Tom sees Jim as he had been taught.So, without even thinking about Jim and his feelings, Tom pursues his own happiness and selfish eagerness for adventures at the expense of Jim’s prolonged captivity.He neglects to tell Huck that Jim was already free and he feels no guilt or uneasiness for keeping a free man locked up.Obviously, Tom regards Jim only as property and tortures him without guilt.Huck,on the other hand, wants nothing more than to see his loyal friend free and happy.

The final difference is that Huck questions the world around him, unlike Tom who blindly takes everything he hears and reads as truths and unalterable facts.Even in the early parts of the novel, Huck questions many lessons and stories that he is told.For example, Huck“[sat] down one time in the back of the woods and had a long think about” organized religion and the purpose of prayer.He uses his critical, realistic mind and decides that he “couldn’t see no advantage in it...and reckoned he wouldn’t worry about it any more”.Huck does the same with Tom’s romantic stories of genies and magicians and “judged that all that stuff was just only one of Tom Sawyer’s lies”.There are many instances in the book where Huck questions and decides for himself what to believe instead of accepting everything as solid facts.Tom, however, believes every word that he reads or hears from his elders.He has never questioned anything he is told about slavery or religion.His life is based on his beloved adventure books and he believes in them wholeheartedly.Tom is outraged when Huck questions the validity and practicality in following his romantic stories and automatically dismisses Huck’s reasonable suggestions.Tom blindly takes those fictional tales as a rulebook or standard for normal life and he “won’t stand by to see the rules broke—because right is right and wrong is wrong”.

Mark Twain creates an obvious difference between the characters of Huck and Tom during the last scene to highlight the change that Huck undergoes.Without Tom,an unchanged character that Huck once modeled himself after, the reader cannot correctly judge how much Huck changed from his experiences down the river and how genuinely good Huck has become.After spending so much time with Jim and discovering Jim’s real character and personality, Huck acquires new understanding, compassion,and respect for him.He can now see past the color of his skin and treat Jim as a human being.Although he will never consider Jim as an equal, he has already taken momentous steps towards realizing that the slave institution is unjust.Huck has gone beyond anybody in his society and has become free of the limitations that the southern society has placed on thought.He has become nearly the opposite of Tom, who is the perfect embodiment of the southern lifestyle and way of thinking.

4.Conclusion

In the two masterpieces, Tom and Huck are portrayed exactly as what boys would like to do in their childhood.Both boys are mischievous and adventurous, too smart for their age; believing in superstition, taking no interest in schooling and church-going; sharing the same good traits of kindness and braveness.Nevertheless, they also differ from each other in many aspects.Tom Sawyer,a dreamer, already civilized, follows the values and beliefs of society whose laws are also highly abided by him.For these reasons, Tom would never have helped free Jim unless he knew that Jim had already been freed.Conversely, Huck Finn, a realist, the outcast existing on the periphery of society, rejects those beliefs for the fear of becoming civilized.Their differences are enlarged as Huck’s adventures going along the Mississippi River.Those differences which outweigh similarities are due to their cognition to society, or to civilization.Tom is brought up and confined by the civilization that he believes in and follows.While Huck represents natural life through his free spirit,his uncivilized ways, and his desire to escape from civilization.And thus these are not just child’s books,they are also adult’s books.The civilized or the free life, which is better, deserved a further thinking.

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