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Book Theory: Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer grew up to fight on opposite sides of the American Civil War
So this has struck me ever since I read *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* all the way back in high school. The ending is... not great, but what sticks out to me is what it reveals about Tom's character (or lack thereof).
He's willing to put both Jim and himself in tons of unnecessary danger all for some imagined idea of glory:
>Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door—you only have to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don’t fasten the doors—but that warn’t romantical enough for Tom Sawyer; no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning-rod. But after he got up half way about three times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted his brains out, he thought he’d got to give it up; but after he was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time he made the trip.
​
>“Jim, don’t act so foolish. A prisoner’s got to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain’t ever been tried, why, there’s more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life.”
“Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ want no sich glory. Snake take ’n bite Jim’s chin off, den whah is de glory? No, sah, I doan’ want no sich doin’s.”
He volunteers to help "free" Jim, but the truth of the matter is that Jim is already free. Tom spends the last fifth of the novel being complicit in Jim's captivity for his own amusement. This *entire time* he could have freed Jim with a single word. But instead, he treats Jim as a toy for his own vainglory.
Hmm, where have I heard this mentality before?
>It's like, if there'd been any real substance to the Dixie they were defending, it might've worked. As it was, they stood to in the defense of personal aggrandizement. A place of such selfishness that it needed slaves to demonstrate its self-importance. This 'look at me' style of being might feel good and look good, but all that 'me' attitude in the south leaves little room for any 'us' solidarity; and a regiment of unified 'us' troops will always defeat a brigade of 'look at me' soldiers. The southerners failed to bank on the 'United' part of the country's name; in every way it was always poised to defeat a self-indulgent Dixie.
>
>–jonnie106 on YouTube, discussing the Confederacy
I mean, *doesn't* this sound familiar?
>Lee had a **sublimely romantic quality about him:** he was a figure who gave his men heroic visions of what they were and what they could become, was a testament to sweet humor and loyalty and duty and the ultimate virtue of action, and was a true tragedian who understood his own appeal to his followers.
>
>Grant was cut from a very different cloth. He was in many ways the quintessential utilitarian, a man less of the refined South, or the elite East, for that matter, than of the gritty West (he talks "bad grammar, one Grant aide slyly quipped, but "talks it nat-urally"), a man fired by a deep-seated conviction and a confidence that could belong only to **someone who had failed in life time and time again, until midway through the Civil War when he found what he knew was somehow his destiny.**
>
>– *April 1865,* by Jay Winik (empahsis mine)
Contrast Tom's character with Huck's, who was *perfectly willing* to go to hell if it meant freeing Jim. And yes, he did go along with Tom's stupid plan. But he a) didn't know that Jim had already been freed; and b) is also twelve.
He's shown himself to be on the right track at least, and if a 12-14 year old Huck was willing to go to hell to free *one* slave, how many more would an adult Huck be willing to go to (metaphorical) hell to free?
Then I thought about the dating of the novels... and realized. In *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,* Tom references a novel that was published in 1847. If *Tom Sawyer* takes place in 1847, its earliest possible start, and *Huckleberry Finn* takes place a year later in 1848 (we know a year passes between the novels), and Tom and Huck are 12 in *Tom Sawyer...* then they would be 26 in 1861, a perfect soldiering age.
Union soldier Huckleberry Finn and Confederate soldier Tom Sawyer is not only the natural conclusion to the themes of Twain's work, but it also makes perfect logincal sense in-universe! And it's just... can you imagine? these two icons of American literature, former best friends facing each other in the bloodiest war in American history? Gosh...
But I'll let the quotes speak for themselves.
​
>Huck and Tom represent two viable models of the American Character. They exist side by side in every American and every American action. America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn't do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I have busted my butt to get where I am, so don't come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs.
>
>–George Saunders, in his essay "The United States of Huck"
​
>I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
>
>–Gen. William Tecumesh Sherman
​
>But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll *go* to hell.”
​
source
So this has struck me ever since I read *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* all the way back in high school. The ending is... not great, but what sticks out to me is what it reveals about Tom's character (or lack thereof).
He's willing to put both Jim and himself in tons of unnecessary danger all for some imagined idea of glory:
>Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door—you only have to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don’t fasten the doors—but that warn’t romantical enough for Tom Sawyer; no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning-rod. But after he got up half way about three times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted his brains out, he thought he’d got to give it up; but after he was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time he made the trip.
​
>“Jim, don’t act so foolish. A prisoner’s got to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain’t ever been tried, why, there’s more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life.”
“Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ want no sich glory. Snake take ’n bite Jim’s chin off, den whah is de glory? No, sah, I doan’ want no sich doin’s.”
He volunteers to help "free" Jim, but the truth of the matter is that Jim is already free. Tom spends the last fifth of the novel being complicit in Jim's captivity for his own amusement. This *entire time* he could have freed Jim with a single word. But instead, he treats Jim as a toy for his own vainglory.
Hmm, where have I heard this mentality before?
>It's like, if there'd been any real substance to the Dixie they were defending, it might've worked. As it was, they stood to in the defense of personal aggrandizement. A place of such selfishness that it needed slaves to demonstrate its self-importance. This 'look at me' style of being might feel good and look good, but all that 'me' attitude in the south leaves little room for any 'us' solidarity; and a regiment of unified 'us' troops will always defeat a brigade of 'look at me' soldiers. The southerners failed to bank on the 'United' part of the country's name; in every way it was always poised to defeat a self-indulgent Dixie.
>
>–jonnie106 on YouTube, discussing the Confederacy
I mean, *doesn't* this sound familiar?
>Lee had a **sublimely romantic quality about him:** he was a figure who gave his men heroic visions of what they were and what they could become, was a testament to sweet humor and loyalty and duty and the ultimate virtue of action, and was a true tragedian who understood his own appeal to his followers.
>
>Grant was cut from a very different cloth. He was in many ways the quintessential utilitarian, a man less of the refined South, or the elite East, for that matter, than of the gritty West (he talks "bad grammar, one Grant aide slyly quipped, but "talks it nat-urally"), a man fired by a deep-seated conviction and a confidence that could belong only to **someone who had failed in life time and time again, until midway through the Civil War when he found what he knew was somehow his destiny.**
>
>– *April 1865,* by Jay Winik (empahsis mine)
Contrast Tom's character with Huck's, who was *perfectly willing* to go to hell if it meant freeing Jim. And yes, he did go along with Tom's stupid plan. But he a) didn't know that Jim had already been freed; and b) is also twelve.
He's shown himself to be on the right track at least, and if a 12-14 year old Huck was willing to go to hell to free *one* slave, how many more would an adult Huck be willing to go to (metaphorical) hell to free?
Then I thought about the dating of the novels... and realized. In *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,* Tom references a novel that was published in 1847. If *Tom Sawyer* takes place in 1847, its earliest possible start, and *Huckleberry Finn* takes place a year later in 1848 (we know a year passes between the novels), and Tom and Huck are 12 in *Tom Sawyer...* then they would be 26 in 1861, a perfect soldiering age.
Union soldier Huckleberry Finn and Confederate soldier Tom Sawyer is not only the natural conclusion to the themes of Twain's work, but it also makes perfect logincal sense in-universe! And it's just... can you imagine? these two icons of American literature, former best friends facing each other in the bloodiest war in American history? Gosh...
But I'll let the quotes speak for themselves.
​
>Huck and Tom represent two viable models of the American Character. They exist side by side in every American and every American action. America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn't do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I have busted my butt to get where I am, so don't come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs.
>
>–George Saunders, in his essay "The United States of Huck"
​
>I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
>
>–Gen. William Tecumesh Sherman
​
>But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll *go* to hell.”
​
source
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