In the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain portrays the eponymous protagonist as a smart boy who can easily scam people. In contrast, the eponymous hero of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an emotionally driven character who follows his internal sense of morality. Mark Twain reintroduces the character of Tom Sawyer in Huckleberry Finn to serve as a foil to Huck and show the importance of thinking with your heart as well as your head. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Huck, the protagonist of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is established as an emotional and morality-driven character. Huck follows his heart, even when it goes against what he's always been taught. Tom Sawyer appears towards the end of the novel and embodies the opposite traits. Tom is intelligent and studious and his actions are not influenced by morality at all. Clearly the two are intended to serve as complements. The importance lies in what is intended to be achieved by the juxtaposition of the two. Twain juxtaposes Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to emphasize that thinking with the heart is at least as important as thinking with the head. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follows the story of Huck as he travels along the Mississippi River. From the beginning, Huck is driven primarily by emotions. In the very first chapter, Huck mentions that the Widow Douglas took him in and attempted to “vilify” him (Twain 32). Huck's misspelling indicated that he rejected civilization and the formal education that comes with it. The action of the story begins because Huck decides to run away from his abusive father based on a primal desire to get away from danger, but without thinking about the best way to do so (Twain 58). Huck's emotional character pays no attention to the danger of sailing down the river and simply does what he thinks is best. Huck also follows his instincts when it comes to morality. Huck makes decisions based on what he believes is right even when society's rules disagree, which is best demonstrated when he decides to help Jim. The most important issue in the novel is the perceived morality of slavery. Jim, Huck's black friend, is a runaway slave and, according to the law, should be captured and returned. Huck's decision is whether to follow what society and the law say, or follow his belief that slavery is inherently wrong. At this point, Jim has been captured and will imminently be sold unless someone can save him (Twain 202). Since Huck is Jim's only true friend, that someone has to be Huck. The facts laid out before Huck say he should leave Jim where he is; the law says that an escaped slave must be captured and imprisoned, and it is wrong to help him. More importantly, Christianity, as taught in slave regions, would prohibit Jim's liberation in this situation, and religion would commonly be identified as synonymous with what is morally correct. In one of the book's most powerful scenes, Huck wonders if God will send him to Hell for helping a black man. Huck decides that if this is true, then "All right then, I'll go to Hell!" (Two 202). This passage is especially important because it shows that Huck's feelings and his moral sense are intertwined. A sense of morality may be derived from what society deems right, but Huck only cares about Jim being his friend. Huck's sense of right and wrong comes from what he feels. Huck's belief in doing what is right is demonstrated when he works directly to solve Jim's problem. Jim was captured as a runaway slave and is currently being held prisoner in a shed until he can bereturned to its owner. Huck's plan to save Jim does not involve thoughts of adventure, fun, or personal glory (Twain 217). The only priority is to get Jim out of danger, demonstrating Huck's sincere and selfless intentions. It is obvious to the reader that the plan would have worked perfectly. SO, following the emotionally driven character's plan would have led to a happy ending for those involved. Then Tom Sawyer appears and proposes a different plan. By following Tom's plan, the lives of everyone involved become worse than if they had listened to Huck's direct plan. When Tom Sawyer appears in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he is already a known person. Huck mentioned him several times in the book but, more importantly, audiences would know him from the previous book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In it, Tom demonstrates both his intelligence and his unscrupulous nature, especially by convincing people to paint a fence for him. So, when he appears in this book, the audience will expect his actions to include various cunning tricks. Judith Fetterly argues that “The desire for glory, the desire to be recognized as extraordinarily intelligent, is nothing new to Tom” (Fetterly 72). His brains and the desire for people to appreciate his intelligence are the main motivating force for Tom. Significantly, Tom's intelligence comes at least in part from books. When his plans are questioned, he replies "Why, haven't you ever read any books?" (Two 222). Here, Tom aligns himself with the bookish intelligence of society, rather than natural cunning. In addition to being a character, Tom can be seen as a symbol of intelligence and rational thinking. When Tom comes into the story, he immediately starts acting like a schemer. His major plot is to help Jim escape. Even though Huck's initial plan would have succeeded, Tom is too obsessed with style and glory to care about freeing Jim (Twain 218). At every step of the plan, Tom makes life harder for everyone, just because that's what his books made him think was the correct way to do things. For example, Tom decides that Jim must be dragged out of the shed with knives (226), write a diary, despite being illiterate (224), and tame dangerous wild animals (240). Tom draws many of his ideas from the stories, as when, in relation to writing a message in Jim's blood, he says "The Iron Mask has always done it, and it's a good way to criticize him too" (224). None of these things will help Jim achieve his goal of freedom. In fact, Jim doesn't like the snakes and spiders thing at all, but Tom ignores him. Tom is so distracted by what the books tell him is the correct way to do things that he ignores Jim's human needs, demonstrating how his intelligence gives rise to a complete lack of emotional intelligence. Tom's lack of morals is especially evident in how he views himself. Tom is so obsessed with glory and adventure that he has a twisted moral to rigidly follow. When the decision is made to get Jim out of the shed with the pickaxes, because the knives take too long, he remarks that "It's not right, and it's not moral...but there's only one way" (Twain 228). Given the end goal of freeing Jim, using picks is the correct thing to do, as it will be faster and more likely to succeed; however, Tom has such strong illusions of grandeur that he values ​​a difficult escape more than helping someone. His learning from books has left Tom with a twisted and unreasonable sense of morality that is on a totally different axis than what would normally be considered moral. While Tom is definitely delusional, he is not a characterimmoral. Even when his actions make Jim uncomfortable, there is no sadism in Tom. James Cox claims that Tom does what he does purely for the love of adventure (Cox 310). Tom's book learning did not lead him to be evil; rather it led him to become disinterested in morality. Even when he ignores the fact that he is hurting Jim's chances for freedom, Tom is ultimately still trying to free him. Tom's intelligence leads him to be amoral, not immoral. Twain believed that learning in schools was not the same as education, and perhaps even that schooling could get in the way of true education. He once wrote, "Never let my education interfere with my education" (QuoteDB). The problem with formal education is most evident in the character of Tom, who gets all his ideas from books, and therefore represents the artificial learning of society. Another time Twain spoke about intelligence was when he said "That man can distinguish right from wrong demonstrates his intellectual superiority over other creatures; but that he can do evil demonstrates his moral inferiority to to any creature that cannot do so" (QuoteDB). Twain cares that humans know right from wrong and believes that the thinking humans think can lead them away from doing what is right. This quote is especially interesting when applied to Huck. When Huck decides to free his friend, he actively chooses to do something that he has always been taught that Huck represents following an internal sense of morality, despite whatever intelligent society may say to the contrary. Some critics have argued that Tom's appearance at the end of the novel undermines the message of the book. Critic Leo Marx observed that "The ending of Huckleberry Finn makes so many readers uncomfortable because they rightly perceive that it jeopardizes the meaning of the entire novel." (Marx 292). He believes that Tom's amoral character works directly against the point Huck makes. Marx's belief is misleading. Rather than undermining Huck's significance in the story, Tom actually emphasizes it. As Janeczko and Matthews mention in their essay on the literary significance of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "Mark Twain brought Tom back at the end of the novel to serve as a foil for Huck; [readers] saw Huck's growth in and sensitivity to beings humans, including Jim, in contrast to Tom's romantic predictability" (Janeczko and Matthews 42). Without Tom serving as a contrast, it wouldn't be as obvious to the audience how kind and morally intelligent Tom is. Twain brings these two opposing forces into play to show the importance of Huck's way of making decisions. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written after the end of the Civil War, so slavery had been abolished for a significant period of time. When Huck takes action to free Jim, the audience knows that Huck made the morally correct decision, even if Huck does not. Huck can easily be seen as the morally correct character. The conflict between the social and emotional foundations of morality is present throughout the novel. In chapter 18, Huck becomes involved in the conflict between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. Here, the feud represents the twisted morality of civilized society. The two families desperately try to kill each other, but even those who participate do not really remember why (Twain 144). Families only continue the conflict because someone older than them told them to, as Buck shows when he says “Oh, yeah, Daddy knows [who started the feud], I guess” (Twain 144). The contrast between this social and emotional morality is shown in the love story between Miss Sophia.