Characters

J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye Compared to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn All famous American authors have written novels using a variety of characters, plots, and settings to illustrate important themes. Throughout literary history many of the same themes have been stressed in different novels. In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, each author writes about the common theme of coming of age. The two novels were written more than half a century apart about two boys who seem like complete opposites, yet they bear striking resemblances to each other. Each author wrote his book depicting settings from his own past and based the plots on personal experiences. While the two novels are in different times and places, they have remarkably similar characters, plots, and themes. To completely understand the two novels, it is necessary to know about each author’s background and how he got the ideas to write them. J. D. Salinge...