The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, bare striking resemblances even though the authors wrote them almost 50 years apart. In particular, the two main characters, Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield, show strong similarities despite seeming like complete opposites. The main likenesses between the two boys shows up through the similarities in plot, the themes that they represent, and both characters strong relationship to the author of each novel.
             Through the plot, one can see that the characters had a similar journey even though they took place in different parts of the country. Both main characters share the qualities of being adolescents, runaways from society, and seek independence, growth and stability in their lives. In fact, the plot of Huckleberry Finn proves very much like a rural version Catcher in the Rye when looked at carefully. Both characters seek a new home where they could live without the pain that life has to offer. Huck and Holden both encountered tests for them to pass on their way to adulthood too. For Huck, the tests showed up as mostly physical, whereas Holden's tests came as more like metaphorical dangers created by his loss of accepted values. He has to face many mental tests throughout his novel where he is forced to make new values for himself due to the fact that he threw out any old values he may have had once dealing with society. Despite the fact that their tests were different, one can clearly see that these boys had similar experiences throughout the book. Both books also show concern for the problems that people were facing at the times by portraying the average American boy of the time period and try to use them to show mankind's natural faults. Huck and Holden both had journeys with obstacles they needed to encounter and had to make a decision on how they were going to combine what society told them with their own thoughts,...