Huck Finn Compare/Contrast Essay Huck Finn /Tom Sawyer

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Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are not the only children in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but they are the two that the reader sees the most of. At the beginning of the book, Huck and Tom are good friends, but readers learn early on that their personalities are just about as different as can be. The children do have their similarities, however, which helps them to maintain an, at times, awkward friendship. The two boys are like two sides of the same coin; while they are both extremely childish - with good reason - and rather mischievous, they struggle to see the others point of view, and their different upbringings have led to personalities that clash easily and often when the two are together.
Huck and Tom have different opinions on many topics, one of the most obvious being their opinions of rules, and whether they should follow them. Huck was raised as a maverick and a rebel by his father, Pap, the town drunk who tried to stifle his son at every opportunity. Tom, on the other hand, was raised in a nice, middle class family who taught him how to properly function in society. Although both have experience with civility - Tom was raised with it and Huck spends some time living with the widow Douglass – they both also enjoy their little game of rebellion with the gang of robbers. This game is the first time we see just how different the boys really are in regards to following the rules. Even when they are being robbers, Tom insists that the group must follow the rules laid out in his adventure novels. His strict devotion to rules and guidelines contrasts with Huck’s trend of questioning everything he had been taught in order to think for himself and also leads Tom to shocking and often stupid acts of malice. Huck breaks t...

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...uckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are essentially polar opposites. Their opinions of civilization and rules, imagination, and control are so different that the two function as perfect foils of one another. When Mark Twain wrote Huck Finn he wanted a story that would make people take a closer look at what society was doing to a younger generation. The characters of Tom and Huck were carried over from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a much lighter, funnier, novel, but still worked to make his point. Twain wanted to show that people raised to be good citizens like Tom were growing up to be egotistical, cruel, brats, and that someone like Huck, who just wanted to help, has been taught that doing so will send him to hell. Between the two characters, it is easy to see which boy Mark Twain wants people to be more like, and his foil of Huck with Tom makes this even more apparent.

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