Tom Sawyer vs. Huck Finn

[fanuzzir]

Several readers have already been exploring the contrast between these two novels. There's two sides of Twain here clearly on display.

[RCM]

---

fanuzzir wrote:
These are thrilling chapters that show Huck's improvisational skills and budding friendship with his fellow runaway Jim. They also introduce you to the character of Huck's father, hanging like a shadow over Huck's brighter prospects.

---

Yes, Bob, it's that dark shadow cast by Finn which completely frames Huck, the son, and his bright prospects which immediately gets the reader's attention.
By way of contrast, it's the picture of Tom and Becky in the cave that remains in this reader's imagination of that other, old story where Tom becomes president of The First National Bank with Becky always by his side; not the most interesting of outcomes.

[fanuzzir]

You won't believe how different those two books, one a sequel to the other, are.

[Everyman]

---

fanuzzir wrote:
You won't believe how different those two books, one a sequel to the other, are.

---

I had never considered HF a sequel to TS, just a book about the same main characters but switching a gut sense thing?

[jd]

---

Everyman wrote:

---

fanuzzir wrote:
You won't believe how different those two books, one a sequel to the other, are.

---

I had never considered HF a sequel to TS, just a book about the same main characters but switching a gut sense thing?

---

I think it is a contrast of dark and light. Tom and Becky living the general American dream and Huck living the nightmare portion.

[ziki]

I just finished Tom Sawyer and I do not know what to make out of it. Trully a boy's book as Twain called it.
For me 'twas a relief that good was good and bad was bad and the line betwixt so clear. The fear never won inspite of the fact that it was always present and palpable. It was acknowledged and didn't mutate to cowardice.

ziki

[fanuzzir]

Ziki, you said it yourself. Twain is a true moralist, writing about manners, regional pecularities, and cultral legacies with the aim of discovering the moral laws that move people to act in certain ways. The point that he found right was right and wrong was wrong in Tom Sawyer means that he was desperate to have his novel coordinate with some sent of national consensus on right and wrong, and that he wanted to secure his place as a national brand name by appealing to a universal standard. In Huck Finn, he says the hell with universal morals, and completely submerges the most gripping questions of morality--do I sell out my best friend because he's black? Can I still hold onto my racism and like this guy?--in a regional dialect so thick that the main character's name for conscience is that little voice inside him telling him that he should turn himself and Jim in and be a good southern boy. It's so experimental--there's very little space for the national, universal viewpoint in the novel unless you're determined to patronize Huck's quandary and say that his upbringing and background is just some kind of thin veneer.