Student Question
Which five characters in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does Twain admire and why?
Quick answer:
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain admires Tom Sawyer for his pragmatic, quick-witted trickster qualities; Huck Finn for his steadfast loyalty; Aunt Polly for her genuine love of Tom; Judge Thatcher for his sense of responsibility; and Ben Rogers for being imaginative and high energy.
Tom Sawyer: Twain admires Tom's high-energy, all-American pragmatic "trickster" personality. Tom is never one to back down or give up on finding a way out of a situation, instead relying on his wits to turn bad situations to his own advantage. The most famous example of this is the way he turns a punishment—having to whitewash a fence—to his own advantage by framing it as a privileged job the other boys pay him for the privilege of doing. By making Tom an energetic trickster, Twain adds him to the list of famous all-American literary tricksters, such as Brom Bones in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." While Twain admires the ever-pragmatic Tom, he also pokes fun at his childish limitations, such as when Tom thinks stealing enough keys will find one to open the lock on the door of the haunted house.
Huck Finn: As they bond over their...
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love of adventure and shared dread of Injun Joe, Huck and Tom grow closer in the second part of the novel. A character trait that Twain admires in Huck is his steadfast loyalty. Huck is the kind of person who can keep a secret and always be relied on. Huck is there with Tom, for example, when they go twice to the haunted house, even after finding Injun Joe there the first time.
Aunt Polly: While Twain's admiration is mostly for red-blooded, all-American male characters, Twain admires Aunt Polly's genuine love for Tom. This can emerge in the form of tough love: Aunt Polly, though often deceived, will give it to Tom when she catches him in a misdeed. We see her open expression of love when she thinks he is dead:
Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touchingly, so appealingly, and with such measureless love in her words and her old trembling voice, that he was weltering in tears again, long before she was through.
Judge Thatcher: Twain admires Judge Thatcher's sense of responsibility. For example, he makes sure to seal off the cave where Tom and Becky got lost.
Ben Rogers: Ben is a minor character but one Twain clearly admires for his red-blooded, "all-boy" love of fun. We see Twain's admiration both in Tom's fear of Ben as a rival and Twain's approving description of him:
Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump—proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat.