Similarities Between Huckleberry Finn And The Great Gatsby

Authors of classic American literature often utilize a character’s development to establish a worldview or opinion. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald use their narrators, Huck Finn and Nick Carraway, to suggest an argument about American society. Seeking adventure, both characters embark on a journey, but their encounters with society leave them appalled. While they each have personal motives for abandoning their past, both end up interacting with different cultures that lead them to a similar decision about society and their futures. Ultimately, they stray from the dominant culture in order to escape the influence of society. Therefore, Twain and Fitzgerald claim that American society

Though they have different motives for leaving their pasts, both characters feel they need to leave the life they have settled into. For Huck, he needs to escape his abusive father and confinement of the cabin. He suffers through living with his father for a while, but Huck becomes so miserable he cannot stay any longer. He even adds that “it was dreadful lonesome,” saying “[he] made up [his] mind [that he] would fix up some way to leave there” (Twain 34). In this moment, Huck determines he will not live confined to some shack in the woods, stifled by his father’s rules. Similarly, Nick also chooses to abandon his monotonous life. He claims that he “enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that [he] came back restless” (3). Since he was “keenly aware of [the east’s] superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio” (176), he chose to move “east and learn the bond business” (3). As opposed to Huck, Nick is not escaping abuse, but rather boredom, so he decides to join the mainstream migration to the east. Huck and Nick choose to escape their situations for different reasons, but they both choose to leave monotony in search of a new thrill. These decisions ultimately start the momentum that will lead Nick and Huck into the influence of dominant culture where they are exposed to the corruption of this society. Additionally, both

When the characters undertake these journeys, they anticipate thrilling experiences but instead have disappointing realizations. For instance, Huck expects the whole trip to be lazily floating down the river, smoking, fishing, and talking to Jim (Twain 130). However, this illusion is soon shattered. As they continue south, Huck encounters many different communities and types of people. Their behavior leads him to an unexpected conclusion about society: “Well, it made me sick to see it…human beings can be awful cruel to one another” (245). In this one moment, all the experiences and situations of Huck’s journey culminate to this one realization. Similarly, before Nick arrives in the east, he sets a false expectation for eastern culture. Nick anticipates his life to become weekend-long parties, wealthy excursions, and continuous adventure. However, he soon finds this is not the case. The easterner’s behavior is so mortifying to Nick that he even describes them as “a rotten crowd” (Fitzgerald 154), and claims he “wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses of the human heart” (2). All of Nick’s upsetting experiences with deceitful people equate to this one acknowledgement. Just like Huck, Nick has chased a dream of freedom and adventure to end up only gaining this harsh understanding. This