Huck Finn

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 11th grade November 2001

download word file, 2 pages 0.0

In Mark Twain's novel, Huck Finn, Huck goes on an adventure to help free the slave Jim. Huck gets himself into many different situations and uses his mind to get him out of trouble. He is similar to another character named Tom Sawyer who is very intelligent, but in a different way. Both Tom and Huck are good in using trickery and games to fool people but they both have their own way of doing it and their own reason.

The difference between Tom and Huck is that Tom's things are mostly imaginary and Huck's is real life. For example, Tom's gang is really just made up because Tom just read something in a book and decides to make up his own gang. They really cause no threat or danger to anything or anyone because they aren't really a gang. Tom doesn't even know what a gang does and just read the things, and learns a "ransom" but they didn't know what a ransom was.

On the other hand, Huck really ran into robbers at the wreck and overhears them wanting to kill someone to shut them up and to steal the loot. He and Jim took the initiative and tried to stop them and took their boat to leave them stranded there, but Huck doesn't want to be a bad guy and makes up his story about his family on the island. This is a two-sided thing because when he tells someone about it, the robbers would be rescued, but then, they'll be put in jail. Tom just makes most of the things up by himself but Huck experiences the actual incidents.

Huck and Tom are both significant characters in this novel and they both have their own roles. Huck is better as the narrator because he is in the middle of the classes and could distinguish between them. He can associate what happens in the outside world to where he comes from. He then, has a better view between the two and can compare and contrast them with each other. Tom is not a good role model in this novel and he is what we should fear in ourselves because he is a protagonist and is not as smart as he thought. He mostly makes up stuff that sometimes he doesn't even know what it means and does. Huck cares about what happens to anything and everyone, but Tom just doesn't have to chance to discuss is