In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the connection between Huck and Tom is contrasted several times throughout the novel such as in the beginning of the novel Twain introduced them as friends who were always around each other. Then by the middle of the book Twain shows how Huck lives and thinks for himself out on the frontier and how he uses Jim as a father figure. By the end of the novel Huck and Tom reunite and that’s where Twain gets to touch up and finish up on the contrasting and comparing of Tom and Huck, which will show how Huck grows up and becomes wiser than Tom whom he looked up too.
In the beginning of the book Twain shows how Huck lives and how he was brought up without a real family. Huck is only thirteen and his father even through Pap is a town drunk, but Pap is not a big part of Huck’s life he has still affected how Huck lives because Huck never had a father to look up to. Twain will introduce a father figure to us in the middle of the novel. Tom is an imaginative person. He lives by what he reads in books. Unlike Huck, Tom is raised by a good family and lives a fairly normal life.
Tom and Huck are best friends. They first started out by playing bandits and pirates and having little adventures. They always talked about having adventures and killing people. This talk just shows us how Tom thinks Huck just catches on to what Tom says which shows tom as a leader and Huck just does as he says. This idea will remain the same till the end of the book. The only thing that will change is that Huck grows up wiser and older but still doesn’t grow out of doing as Tom says.
By the middle of the novel Twain introduces Jim but not just as Jim because he has already done that but he introduces him as Huck’s father figure. Even though jim is a black slave living in the South during slavery, Huck still looks at him as a father figure because Huck never had a living father and what Jim says and how he acts really makes more of an adult than any other character in the novel. Anyhow Huck is on his own now, and even though Jim is there he still thinks for himself and reacts for himself but with a little bit of what Tom would do.
Huck really looks up to Tom and tries to do things Tom’s way even though he thinks things out on his own and every time Huck does things his way he is successful because the way Huck thinks is realistic, unlike the way Tom thinks. By the end of the novel Huck and Tom are reunited in a really exaggerated way. By then Huck has been on his own more and knows to think for himself. He has also learned how to get things done quickly and successfully. But then Tom comes along and tries to do everything his way and Huck lets him because he thinks that Tom knows how it’s done and Toms is better than he and Huck is willing to make people happy.
This situation comes when Jim is imprisoned and his life is in danger. Tom still doesn’t want to do things Huck’s way because it’s not as exciting and because that’s not how it’s done in the books. Because Jim is a slave Tom tries out all of his ideas on Jim. This attitude shows us how whites in that part of the United States in that time period felt about black slaves, whites treated them as property and not human beings. Huck and Tom are compared and contrasted several ways and several times throughout the novel why Huck and Tom are friends with different personalities.
Huck is adventurous in a very different way than Tom. Huck is a character that shows a realistic point of view of life because he never got the mainstream comforts of life back then compared to Tom, who was raised by a family and had a happy home. Therefore he’s never been through hard times like Huck. That’s why the way Tom thinks is so imaginative. Huck and Tom are characters that are the same age and but have different personalities. But what really brings them together is their sense of adventure.
