Pittman 1

Linzie Pittman

College Comp 1

Research Paper

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye

Samuel Clemens was born on November 30th, 1835. He would become

to be known as Mark Twain. Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. Living on

the Mississippi exposed Twain to slavery as a child, and would one day

impact the writing of two his American classics; The Adventures of Tom

Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn was

released in 1884. The book drew controversy over its racism and sometimes

foul language. J.D. Salinger was born in 1919. Salinger grew up in Manhattan,

New York. Like his character Holden in The Catcher in the Rye, he got kicked

out of several prep schools. He was then sent to a military academy. Salinger

would later go on to take a short story course at Columbia University, where

his career in literature began. Salinger would write The Catcher in the Rye, in

1951. Within two weeks of the book’s publication, it was on the New York

Times bestseller list. It remained on the list for 30 weeks. The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye both express and explore traits

and themes through their characters going on a journey, being an outsider in

society and through relationships.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of Huck Finn in the
1880’s. Huck is a 12 year old boy who runs around with ‘Tom Sawyer’s

Gang’. He is being civilized by The Widow Douglas until his father comes to

town and gains custody of Huck, and his gold. His father took him over to the

Illinois shore where they hid out until Huck decided to fake his own death to

escape his father and the idea of being ‘sivil’. After finding the runaway

slave, Jim, on Jackson’s island, Huck and Jim head down the Mississippi in

search of freedom. Along the way they miss the mouth of the Ohio, and Huck

ends up at the Grangerfords. The Grangerfords have been in a feud with the

Shepardson’s, for a reason no one seems to remember. After one particularly

bloody battle Huck takes off with Jim further down river. Soon enough Huck

picks up the Dauphin and Duke, a pair of con-artists who join them on their

journey. Since Huck is a child, and Jim is a slave neither have to authority to

kick the ‘royalty’ off the raft. So, Huck and Jim go along with what they say.

The royalty nearly get away with stealing the Wilk’s family fortune, until

Huck hides the money for the daughter to find. Huck gets even luckier when

the actual family of the late Peter Wilks shows up to collect the estate. They

make a narrow get away. Their next scheme goes too far. They sell Jim is a

runaway in order to collect the reward. Huck goes on a search for Jim and

finds out he is at Tom Sawyer’s aunt’s plantation. Tom Sawyer soon comes

and he thinks up an elaborate scheme to free Jim, that ends up scaring the

neighbors and ultimately gets Tom shot. After this is all over Tom fesses up

to their true identities and Huck finds out that Jim is a free man, and Huck

has no intentions of becoming civil.

 Pittman 3

The story of Holden Caulfield is told in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden

has just got kicked out of Pencey prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Pencey is

the fourth academy for Holden to be kicked out of. After getting into a fight

with his roommate, Holden sets off, without the knowledge of his parents,

back to New York. Holden is struggling with a lot of things in life including his

younger brother Allie’s death from leukemia, and seeing the body of an old

classmate lying on the pavement. Holden is living in a changing world, where

all he wants is for everything to remain the same. When Holden arrives in

New York he decides to stay at a hotel. While at the hotel Holden calls Faith

Cavendish, in hopes that she will want to have sex.

Holden decides against it then dances the night away down in a bar where

he drinks and smokes heavily. Holden can’t help but to wonder where the

ducks in Central park go in the winter, he even asks his cab driver. Holden is

so curious about it, he even asks his next cab driver. After leaving the jazz

club Holden goes back to the hotel room and waits for the prostitute he

ordered, but when she comes up, he decides he doesn’t want to do it. He

pays her and she leaves. Holden gets beat up the next morning by Maurice,

the prostitutes pimp. He claims Holden short changed her. After Holden gets

punched in the gut and Maurice leaves, he pretends he has been shot in the

stomach. The next day Holden calls Sally Hayes and arranges a date, they go

skating. He also goes to look for Phoebe in the park and meets Carl Luce for

drinks. Holden finally decides to go see his little sister Phoebe, and then

spends the night at Mr. Antolini’s house. After a possibly ‘flitty’ moment,
Holden leaves and spends the night on a bench. The next day he decides he

will leave New York, but he must tell Phoebe first. Phoebe convinces him to

stay and Holden takes her to the zoo, where she wants to ride the carousal.

Holden is so elated to see his sister happy he nearly cries.

Huck goes on a journey down the Mississippi and away from being

‘sivil’. Huck leaves his abusive father and the possibility of going back to

being “sivilized.” Huck has never liked the idea of being civil. Ever since

Widow Douglas had taken him in he has had to wear clothes he can’t stand

to wear. Whenever the opportunity arises, Huck is quick to get back into his

old rags. Huck wants to smoke, but Widow Douglas will simply not allow this.

He can’t slouch. He must never put his feet up. He needs to read the Bible.

He needs to pray more. He needs to learn his spelling. This is not the lifestyle

for the adventurous Huckleberry Finn. His father’s doesn’t seem too bad to

Huck at first. “Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all

rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the

widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to

bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have Miss

Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more.” (Twain

16). Soon enough though, Huck can’t tolerate his father’s drunken beatings.

“But by and by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand it. I

was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in.

Once he locked me in and was gone three days.’ (Twain 16). Huck needs to

get away so he fakes his own death, and sets off alone down the Mississippi.
 Pittman 5

On Huck’s first stop at Jackson’s Island, he meets Jim. Huck is familiar with

Jim; he is Miss Watson’s slave. Jim and Huck decide that they will set off

down the Mississippi in search of the Ohio River mouth. Huck loves being on

the Mississippi, no one is there to tell him what to do or when to do it. On

their way south, Jim and Huck come across shipwreck, the Grangerfords, the

wealthy Wilks’, and of course the ‘Duke and Dauphin’. Eventually Jim and

Huck realize that they are so far south that they must have missed the

opening to the Ohio River. Since they are in the company of the ‘royalty’

they have no say over where they get to go, Huck being a child and Jim

being a slave gives them no authority. Each one of their stunts takes them

further from St. Petersburg, where Huck’s adventure started. So they follow

along with the schemes of the two con-artists, until one of their get rich

schemes goes too far when they decide to give up Jim as a runaway slave, in

order to get the cash reward. Huck goes in search for Jim and ends up at

Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Sally’s and Uncle Silas’ plantation. After Huck passes as

Tom Sawyer, the real Tom comes. Tom pretends to be his brother, Sid

Sawyer. Tom creates an elaborate scheme to get Jim out of the shed, and

Huck follows along. Eventually, the boys admit to their true identities after

Tom gets shot in the calf. This adventure has made Huck even more

determined to not become ‘sivil’. He likes adventure. “But I reckon I got to

light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to

adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.’ (Twain,

196). Huck is going to set out west, in search of a new adventure. The west
is a new frontier, a new journey, one where he can join others who ran away

from being sivil.

Holden Caulfield goes on a journey to find love. The main reason

Holden decides to leave Pencey early was because Stradlater has spent the

evening with Jane Gallagher. Holden had spent a lot of time together with

Jane when they were younger. He had even come close to necking with her.

Jane is special to Holden, even though he can never bring himself to call her.

He doesn’t even know what school Jane is going to. In Bloom’s Modern

Critical Views, Gerald Rosen analyses why Holden refuses to call Jane: “by

avoiding a meeting or a telephone conversation with Jane Gallagher, he

holds on to his old image of her which is clearly no longer applicable since

she is dating Stradlater; apparently Holden has been defending this image

and avoiding her present reality for quite a while since he doesn’t even know

which school she goes to” (106). Holden is in love with the Jane he used to

know, and by not contacting her, he can tell himself that she is the same

Jane that he used to play checkers with on the porch. Jane isn’t the only love

interest that Holden has. There is Sally Hayes. Holden likes the ladies:

“Women kill me. They really do. I don’t mean I’m oversexed or anything like

that-although I am quite sexy” (Salinger 54). At ten o’clock on Sunday,

Holden wakes up and decides to call Sally. he makes a date with Sally, and

they go to a Lunt’s play. Holden gets annoyed at Sally during intermission

when she talks to another boy, his name was George and he went to

Andover. After the play Sally suggested that they go skating together at
 Pittman 7

Radio City, neither of them were very good at it. They gave up and went

inside to have a drink and discuss plans for Holden coming over for

Christmas. Holden starts telling her his plan, he wants to run away with her.

He wants to leave New York. He begs Sally to come with him. “’ What we

could do is tomorrow morning we could drive up to Massachusetts and

Vermont, and all around there, see. It’s beautiful as hell up there. It really is.’

I was getting excited as hell the more I thought of it, and I sort of reached

over and took old Sally’s goddam hand. What a goddam fool I was.” (Salinger

132). Holden continues his rant, his voice raises and Sally tells him he is

yelling, but he continues: ‘” we could get married or something. I could chop

all our own wood in the wintertime and all. Honest to God, we could have a

terrific time! Wuddaya say? C’mon! Wuddaya say? Will you do it with me?

Please?”’ (Salinger 132). Sally doesn’t really agree to his plan and he calls

her a pain in the ass. He was sorry he said it. Later, after Sally left, he was

sorry he had mentioned anything at it all. He didn’t really want to take her to

Vermont, but he meant it when he said it. Holden is in search for love, but

just can’t seem to find or accept it.

Huck has always been an outsider. Huck has no supportive family. His

father only comes to find him because he hears about the gold that Huck and

Tom Sawyer had found. Miss Watson is good to him, but he doesn’t fit in with

her and her etiquettes, or her religious beliefs. Huck was having trouble

enjoying himself in this lifestyle: “Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it

got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the niggers in and had
prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a

piece of candle, and put in on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the

window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so

lonesome I most wished I was dead” (Twain, 2). Huck is an outsider to Miss

Watson’s world, where praying and getting an education come before

anything else. Huck goes through the routines, but he doesn’t really care

much about Moses and all the other dead people the Widow and Miss

Douglas were always talking to him about. Huck was also an outsider when it

came to Tom Sawyers gang, where Huck was trying to belong. Huck even

offers up Miss Watson’s life, just so that he can be a part of this group of

boys. Tom comes up with crazy ideas, one of them being his elaborate plan

to get Jim out of the shed. Huck has always just went along with Tom’s crazy

plans to ensure that Tom will remain his ‘friend’. Earlier in the story Huck had

agreed to join Tom Sawyer’s band of robbers. Huck is aware that Tom gets

carried away, but he wants a friend so he goes along with Tom’s ideas

anyway, always trying to fit in. Tom’s idea to break Jim out of the shed was

very dangerous and Huck knew it: “I COULDN’T understand it no way at all. It

was outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be

his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save

himself. And I DID start to tell him; but he shut me up and says:

‘Don’t you reckon I know what I’m about? Don’t I generly know what

I’m about?’
 Pittman 9

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t I SAY I was going to help steal the nigger?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then.’

That’s all he said, and that’s all I said. It warn’t no use to say any more;

because when he said he’d do a thing, he always done it” (Twain, 156-157).

So, Huck followed along with Tom’s scheme. Tom was one of Huck’s only

friends, even if he wasn’t a very good one. Huck wanted to fit in and be

brave like Tom, so he did the dirty work; he dug the holes, carried the stones

and captured the critters. Huck did all of this for Tom so he could have

someone to call his friend.

Holden Caulfield is also an outsider. From the beginning of the story we

can see that Holden secludes himself from the others around him. Holden

doesn’t go watch the football game with the rest of his classmates; he sits on

a hill by himself: “Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football fame with

Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal

around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to

commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn’t win. I remember around

three o’clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of

Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary

War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the
two teams bashing each other all over the place. You couldn’t see the

grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on

the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there”

(Salinger, 2). Holden didn’t go sit with the students; in fact he went

somewhere where he couldn’t even see them. He makes excuses for not

going to the game, like he had to visit old Mr. Spencer and he just got back

with the fencing team. Holden is always making excuses, excuses why

people aren’t good enough. He does this by calling other people “phonies”.

Holden tries to find fault in everyone so he can distance himself from them.

Holden grew up with Park Avenue apartments and expensive prep schools.

Almost every adult in Holden’s life is a doctor or a lawyer or a professor, all

of which fit the criteria for Holden to classify them as phonies. Holden

chooses to alienate himself from other people. Holden has no real friends; his

classmates are acquaintances whom he describes disdainfully. A critic,

Charles H. Kegel is quoted in Stuart A. Kallen’s Understanding The Catcher in

the Rye: ‘“[The] main reason for Caulfield’s . . . difficulties lies in his absolute

hatred of phoniness. And he finds that phoniness, that hypocrisy, not only in

the world of personal contracts, but in the world of art as well. He detests

phony books, phony music, phony movies and plays”’ (Kallen, 62). Holden

calls everyone around him a phonie, this way he doesn’t have to admit to the

phoniness in himself. Holden always claims he is going to do things but never

follows through with them. Like, all of the phone calls he never makes.

Holden’s inability to ever communicate isolates him further, from his peers
 Pittman 11

and from adults.

Huck has few true relationships in his life. One of his strongest

relationships Huck and Jim’s relationship starts out a little rocky. Huck has

always known black people as pieces of property to other people and never

as actual people. Before meeting Jim on Jackson’s island, Huck never

considers that society may be wrong. Huck’s own father had cursed the

government for letting blacks allow being free. After surviving a rough patch

of weather, Huck plays a trick on Jim making him believe it was all a dream.

After making Jim believe this, Huck starts to see Jim as a person: “But that

was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed HIS foot to get

him to take it back. It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go

and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it

afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done

that one if id a knowed it would make him feel that way” (Twain, 58). Huck

and Jim’s relationship flourishes after this and Huck starts to think that

maybe he won’t turn Jim in to Miss Watson, the lady both of them are

running away from. Even though Huck and Jim have gotten very close over

the journey, Huck still feels it’s his duty to turn Jim in. When it comes down

to it though, Huck claims he would go to Hell if it meant that he would get

Jim back:

“’All right, then, I’ll Go to hell’—and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay
said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing

out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was my

line, being bring up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter I would go to

work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything

worse, I would do that too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I

might as well go the whole hog” (Twain, 143). Huck thought of all the good

times he and Jim had had together, and all the times Jim called him honey

and petted his head, and do all the things that he possibly could for Huck,

and he called Huck his best friend after the smallpox incident. Huck knew

that Jim was worth saving. Jim was his true friends.

Holden also has few real relationships. Throughout Holden’s few days

in New York, Holden speaks of childhood memories, and the joy children can

bring, especially his sister. In fact, of Holden’s best relationships is with

Phoebe. Holden describes Phoebe: “You’d like her. I mean if you tell old

Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell your talking about. I

mean you can even take her anywhere with you” (Salinger, 67). Holden

spends a lot of time thinking about Phoebe, he considers calling her many

times. Phoebe, like Holden isn’t afraid to say it like it is. Holden is always

concerned about his little sister. Holden thinks about his catching pneumonia

and dying and how it could affect Phoebe. Holden thinks Phoebe would, “feel

pretty bad if something like that happened. She likes me a lot.” Holden then

realizes that he needs to go see Phoebe. When Holden finally makes his way

to the apartment late at night Phoebe he admits that he felt good for a
 Pittman 13

change, seeing Phoebe made him this way. After Holden complains about

school, she accuses him of not liking anything. After not finding anything to

prove her wrong, he tells her about his secret dream of becoming a catcher

in the rye and tells Phoebe talking to her is one of the things he actually

enjoys: “’ Anyway, I like it now,’ I said. ‘I mean right now. Sitting here with

you and just chewing the fat and horsing—‘’ (Salinger, 172). Talking with his

little sister is one of the only things in the world that Holden feels happy

doing. He wants to be ‘the catcher’ and save her from growing up. That’s all

he wants to do, save Phoebe and other children from falling into adulthood.

Holden wants to keep her just the way she is. Phoebe is the only one that

Holden confides with about running away, he has to see her just one more

time. Phoebe is the only one he cares to see again before he leaves.

Holden’s relationship with Phoebe is one of the only real relationships he has.

Holden and Huck both go on journeys, are outsiders and have few

relationship.
 Works cited

Rosen, Gerald. “A Retrospective Look at The Catcher in the Rye.” Bloom’s

Modern Critical Views J.D. Salinger. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers,

1987. 106. Print.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown Company, 1951.

Print.

Kallen, Stuart A. Understanding The Catcher in the Rye. San Diego: Lucent

Books, Inc. 2001. Print.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nashville: American

Renaissance Books, 2009. Print.