Huckleberry Finn And Sula Comparison

In the novels Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sula by Toni Morrison, the characters in each story fall victim to friendship. These friendships that the characters entertain themselves with are detrimental to their consciousness and their morality. From Nel hiding Sula’s murder of a young boy to Nick aiding in both Daisy and Tom’s infidelity, a strong pattern that emerges from these stories is, characters becoming corrupted by their friendships. In contrast, Huck is actually encouraged and helped by Jim to become a better person. He falls through the hole of being a victim, In my belief, primarily because he is mentally secure in who he is and could not become persuaded into corruption. At the same …show more content…
In the novel, Nel and Sula are supposed to be spending a relaxing day by lake but, this quickly changes when Chicken comes down to the lake. The girls start playing with Chicken and in a series of rapid escalation, Sula swings Chicken around, he slips from her hand, soars into the lake, and drowns. The event seemed to have been an accident but, because the girls decided not to tell anyone, it quickly became second degree murder. Throughout the novel Nel can be seen as the submissive one in her relationship with Sula, never speaking up or standing up for herself, while Sula was the more aggressive and dominate one always speaking and taking care of the both of them. The influence that Sula has on Nel, limits Nel from becoming her own person. It is even stated in the book how alike the two become; Sula’s mother comments on it saying that she could never tell the difference between the two. This type of relationship leads Nel into a loss of her self identity, the second she befriends Sula she loses herself, and instead of being her own person, she becomes an extension of Sula. As Sula’s extension, Nel is easily succumbed into doing everything that Sula does and being everything Sula is. This is why she couldn’t tell anyone about Chicken, because if Sula didn’t tell anyone then she couldn’t either. Infact, right after the accident Nel says that she thinks someone saw the accident, …show more content…
Huck, in the beginning of the novel, is an adventurous boy who runs away from his abusive father, and on the way finds Jim, a runaway slave. As the novel progresses the bond between Huck and Jim grows steadily. In contrast to the other books, Huck is not led into committing corrupt acts when he is with Jim. Instead Jim teaches Huck how to become a better person. One very crucial part of the novel where Huck can be seen as changing into a better person, was when Huck said that he knew he would go to hell for helping Jim but, that wouldn’t stop him. After Jim had been sold by the King Huck could have just forgotten about him and continued on his journey but, by getting to know Jim and by experiencing his kindness and his loving nature and being impacted by him, Huck decided to look beyond the social norms of his time, and get his friend back. Jim teaches Huck how to care and makes Huck a better person. Through their friendship the only thing that Huck hides is Jim because of his skin color, Huck knows that many people will try to harm him because of it and only had Jim’s best interest at heart. While in the other novels, Nick and Nel are persuaded by their friends to hide secrets because of the social repercussions that would emerge if their secrets got