Thoreau And Huckleberry Finn Comparison

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated,” (Confucius). Through both of the novels, Thoreau and Huck have their own ideas about the way their life should be. One may have a little different context than the other, but there is many ways to interpret one concept through the eyes of another. Thoreau and Huck have similar values and beliefs towards simplicity, civilization, and nature. Simplicity is a mode of life for both Thoreau and Huck, but for Thoreau, it is a philosophical idea as well. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail,” (Thoreau 381). Thoreau points the

In both Walden and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Connections, Huck and Thoreau both use nature as symbolism to make nature more significant. Thoreau describes the pond as a mirror more than once. “Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads,” (Thoreau 384-385). He portrays that the pond is a reflection of human emotions. The way that Thoreau describes the pond daily and seasonally parallel the varieties of and changes in his reflections. Like Thoreau, nature has a deeper meaning to Huck as well. Huck refers to the river as an escape from both society and Pap. The river is the only way that Jim and Huck can take if they both want to be free at the present moment and in their futures. Huck describes it as, “So in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and did it seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us,” (Twain 206). To Huck, the river represents a life that does not have to be controlled by society and rules. A life that he could get used to living. Every person has a choice. One’s choice determines their consequences and paths of life. Thoreau and Huck use nature to escape the restraints of society and learn to find themselves. By choosing those paths, Huck and Thoreau found another choice that most could not. At the hand of choosing another path, no person ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of their choices as shown