Huck's wishing for Tom to help him escape is ironic because when Tom is around to help Jim "escape" at the novel's end, he unnecessarily prolongs Jim's captivity to implement his Romantic plotline. When Huck is trying to escape from Pap at the beginning of the novel, he longs for Tom's "fancy touches" for his escape, but Huck escapes flawlessly and practically from Pap because of his pragmatic intellect.
If Tom had been there, he most likely would have asked Huck to allow him some time to come up with his escape plan and then would have developed an elaborate story to accompany his plan, which would have made it ineffective and would have put Huck in even more danger from Pap.
Twain characterizes the two boys in this manner because Huck is Twain's voice--the voice of the Realist, someone who is practical and usually logical in his thinking. In contrast, Tom represents the Romantics for whom Twain held so much contempt. He believed that Romantic authors drew out their writing unnecessarily by adding unrealistic elements and too many flowery descriptions. Philosophically, any plan that Tom develops cannot be successful because Twain would be admitting that the Romantics trump him and his own philosophy of writing.
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