Huck Finn is a fourteen year-old son of the town drunk and he wears dirty clothing. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck's dad had left him, and the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, adopted him. Widow Douglas and Miss Watson's attempt to civilize Huck was only partially successful. Huck learned to read and write but he still would climb out of his window at night to meet up with Tom Sawyer's gang. Huck's life in the town ends when his father returns and kidnaps him, hoping to lay his hands on Huck's fortune. Huck eventually ends up escaping his father by faking his own death and goes to Jackson Island. Once at Jackson Island, Huck meets up with Jim, Miss Watson's slave, who has run away because she threatened to sell him. The two of them, Huck and Jim, end up living a life of freedom on the raft. Huck knows that helping Jim escape is a sin, but Huck decides, "All right, then, I'll go to hell (Telgen 6)."".
Tom's antics in The Adventures of Huck Finn are not as harmful and much less innocent than in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom is still where he left off in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by continuing to lead the other boys in imaginative games based on his reading of romantic adventure literature. When Tom finds out that Huck is going to free Jim he takes up the challenge, creating elaborate schemes to free the man when he could just tell the family that Jim has already been freed by Miss Watson. Huck and Jim don't approve of Tom's "adventures,"" although they feel that Tom has authority in such matters. Tom's games are thoughtless and cruel, they make Jim's life miserable and they also terrorize Aunt Sally. Tom is eventually punished for his foolish trips into fantasy; during Jim's escape he is shot and he is seriously wounded (Telgen 7).
In The Adventures of Huck Finn Jim is a runaway slave who has escaped from his owner, Miss Watson. Jim is Huck Finn's companion during their travel on a raft down the Mississippi River (Telgen 6).
