Essay, Research Paper: Characterizations Of Huck And Jim

Pals through both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom and Huck have many similarities that make them the infamous duo they have become. Both are basically orphans who are being raised by upscale members of society. They are both being taught to be civilized and yet their rowdy personas break through. However, Tom is more influenced by the charecters in books he was taught to read than by what he is told. He has no problem with slavery, yet when the opportunity came to free Jim he jumped at the chance to do something adventurous.like the people he read about. Huck was slightly influenced by what Miss Watson and the Widow had taught him, primarily his religious views. When he began helping Jim he was at first worried about whether or not that meant he would go to hell, and finally decided he didn't care.Tom was a much more fickle chareacter, he did basically what suited him and not really ever cared about what was concidered right. Huck gained his own moral views from the ordeal but then succomed to peer pressure and went back to being just like he was before after meeting up with Tom again.
The best adjective to describe Jim is spirited. In the novel Jim is seen through the eyes of Huck as a good guy, but also an ignorant and sometimes silly slave. In actuality Jim was most likely not nearly as stupid as he made out. Huck seemed to think he and Jim were partners and he was helping the slave escape to freedom yet Jim was a much more able adult than Huck gave him credit for. The way Jim had escaped on his own originally, the way he could flee and hide without getting caught, and the way he played along with Huck's schemes show that Jim is acutely aware of everything and while he is uneducated, he is intellegent in many ways. Perhaps he felt he had to play dumb in order to escape and also for Huck's benefit. Twain satired how Jim was in many ways more intellegent that the Southern white society in the situation where Huck was explaining how the French speak a different language, and while Huck was correct, Jim still managed to win the argument. He had to be very tolerant of not only his life as a slave but also of his treatment from Huck. He never once let on to his misery in front of Huck and stayed in good spirits though his life was being tampered with by a young boy.

A very nice perspective on an interesting Novel