What is Wrong with Tom Sawyer?

Throughout The Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn, Huck Finn idolizes his best friend, Tom Sawyer. Huck thinks highly of Tom’s imagination, creativity, and passion for adventure. However, it is these exact characteristics that almost get them both killed and Jim captured in the end. While Tom is symbolic of an idealistic imaginative school of thought, Huck is much more down to earth and symbolic of a realistic worldview.

Throughout the novel, Tom is portrayed as someone who likes taking risks and who has a more liberal mindset. Early on, Tom sees Jim sleeping under a tree, and advocates for tying him up for fun (5). Tom is also shown to have a wild imagination, when he gathers together his “band of robbers” to ambush the “Arabs” and when he explains how magic lamps work to Huck (10, 14). Most importantly, Tom is the engineer behind the elaborate plan to break Jim out of his imprisonment. He is the one who decides that a tunnel needs to be dug, animals need to be smuggled in to keep Jim company, “nonymous letters” need to be written to warn the Phelps’s, and all sorts of things need to be taken in to help Jim be a proper prisoner. This, or course, is all overkill and ironic, because the tunnel that Tom and Huck use to smuggle in the items also could be Jim’s ticket to freedom, weeks sooner than it actually was. Tom is wildly imaginative, and usually does whatever he cooks up in his head.

On the other hand, Huck is portrayed almost as the opposite of Tom, with a much more conservative mindset. When Tom wants to tie Jim up, Huck does not want to for fear of making a disturbance (5). He is skeptical of the validity of both the Arab ambush and of genies being contained in lamps (10,14). In addition, Huck thinks of Tom a number of times on his

voyage, pertaining to new opportunities for exploration. When passing the run-aground steamboat, his thoughts turn to how much Tom would have liked the opportunity to explore it (67). Finally, Huck goes along with Tom’s plan for Jim, but only grudgingly. He does not understand (and rightfully so) why they have to go to so much trouble to make Jim into the proper prisoner before his escape instead of simply leading him out through the tunnel in the first place. Compared to Tom, Huck is a much more conservative person.

So, why does Twain make these two best friends so different? Perhaps Twain is commenting on the duality of human nature. He is saying that it is possible for two of the same creature to have completely opposite viewpoints of the world. Maybe he is making a statement about the conflict between innovative and conservative angles of his time. Or maybe he is simply saying that opposites attract, and can often make the closest couples.