This speaks quite clearly to the different attitudes the two authors had about what to do with this hypocritical, greedy, and foolish society. Thoreau argues for revolution in a way that Twain almost certainly would have avoided. Instead, Twain's protagonist Huck says that the best way to deal with direct violence and injustice from people like Pap "is to let them have their own way." To Thoreau, acceptance of such injustice was the same as performing the injustice. For Twian, society is to late to be saved; remembering that he wrote his book over a decade after the close of the Civik War and the end of slavery suggests that Twain saw his society as basically unchanged by this major event. Rather than changing society, Huck (and presumably Twain's) solution is simply to leave it behind.
This fundamental difference between the two author's views on the irrationalities, absurdities, and injustices of human society and "civil" government shows up in many ways in these two works. For example, Twain and his characters would almost certainly not have suffered prison for their beliefs when escape was easy. Though Huck breaks the law...
He also plans with Tom to help set Jim free a second time, when he is being held in a makeshift jail cell. Thoreau called for open resistance, which was clearly not Huck or Twain's way. Strangely, this suggests a viewpoint on the part of Thoreau that is, though less cynical than Twain's, much darker in its overall view of humanity. Thoreau displays an outright distrust for other people when he
claims that the majority is not wise; though Twain definitely satirizes mob mentality and many of the prevailing majority viewpoints of his time, he also shows many kind and well-meaning people. Even while he deems society as a whole to be a foolish and even vicious entity, Twain seems to believe that people are basically good in a way that Thoreau does not suggest in his essay.
Both authors show a clear mistrust of society, but Mark Twain and
Henry David Thoreau had very different ideas on how to deal with this distrust, as evidenced by Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government." Twain's main character continually subverts society and the government, showing the hypocrisy inherent in the system without ever directly challenging it. Thoreau, on the other hand, directly confronts the hypocrisies of society and demands that they be redressed through direct revolutionary action. Ironically, this means Thoreau's is actually more hopeful -- he believes that extreme action and constant vigilance could lead to true and lasting change. Twain's only solution is to shrug one's shoulders, smile, and leave society be.
