49 pages • 1 hour read
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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Themes
Childhood and Growing Up
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of literature’s great love letters to childhood. Mark Twain modeled Tom, Huck, and the town of St. Petersburg after people and places from his own childhood. Tom’s misery over his chores, his delight at the feelings of first love, his hatred of Sunday school, and his brash need to show off reflect authenticity on Twain’s part. Tom’s love of make-believe is a key element of his personality. This play instinct is often lost in adulthood or is forced out of adults in the face of their growing responsibilities.
Books about growing up are often coming-of-age stories that celebrate maturity as an objective good. Tom Sawyer exemplifies this in some ways. However, in the Conclusion, Twain is clear in his sadness when he writes that, because Tom Sawyer is a boy’s story, “[i]t must stop here” (276). If he were to write about Tom as an adult, the story would end with a marriage, and the sense of adventure would end.
While Tom experiences some maturation, there is no sign that the changes in him will be permanent. The greatest moments of Tom’s maturation are his testimony against Injun Joe, his resilience in the cave, and the conversation in which he talks Huckleberry Finn out of returning to his former life of freedom. Judge Thatcher has great hopes for Tom’s future, although it’s difficult to imagine Tom fitting neatly into a military academy. These examples of Tom’s growing maturity are offset by the fact that Tom wants to use the money to fund a gang of robbers. However, he also told Huck earlier that he would use the money to get married.
Huckleberry Finn is thrust into a more grown-up situation when the Widow Douglas takes charge of him. If this is a step toward adulthood for Huck, he hates it. Normal aspects of mature life—regular bathing, sleeping indoors, wearing clean clothes—are anathema to Huck’s contentment and sense of freedom and autonomy. He is determined to remain in childhood as long as possible, even though he allows Tom to persuade him to return to Widow Douglas.
Moral and Ethical Development
For most of the novel, morality is largely subjective for Tom Sawyer. There is no better example of this than his fantasies about life as a robber, a pirate, and an outlaw. He looks forward to making people walk the plank and killing his enemies, because it will lead to fame, riches, and beautiful women. What he does not think about are the potential consequences of these actions. Tom’s morals are always tied into whatever he feels in the moment.
The relative absence of morals in the novel’s youngest characters is understandable, given the nature of Sunday school as Twain presents it. Sunday school is ostensibly where the children learn morals, but it is an echo chamber that even the adults in the novel scarcely tolerate. Tom’s only enthusiasm for church is wrapped up in his quest to win the Bible as a prize, thereby appearing wise to the adults and making the other children jealous. Tom rarely hears a thing in church that makes him reflect on his choices or that prompts him to do better.
Tom’s morality develops in stages. One of the first instances of his developing ethical framework occurs on Jackson’s Island. Although he enjoys the ham they stole for the trip, Tom remembers that the Bible says not to steal, and he amends his code to become a pirate who doesn’t participate in theft: “[…] they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing” (112).
The most significant example of Tom’s growing morality is the trial of Muff Potter. Tom knows that Muff is not the murderer, and he and Huck promise that they won’t tell. Still, in the days leading up to the trial, Tom worries that Huck will give them away. On the day of the trial, Tom’s conscience gets the better of him, and he names Injun Joe as Robinson’s killer. This places Tom in great danger, but the stress of his fear over Injun Joe’s vengeance is more tolerable than the guilt he felt while allowing Muff Potter to languish in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. At the novel’s conclusion, Tom is in a better position to reflect on the consequences of his actions, but he is still committed to the idea of being a robber and leading a life of crime.
Freedom
Huckleberry Finn is the novel’s most potent symbol of freedom. In an early description of Huck’s character, Tom observes:
Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing and swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, or put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had (50).
Tom sees Huck as an avatar of freedom because Huck doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to. However enviable Huck’s situation might seem to Tom and the other boys, it arises from an unfortunate family situation. Huck has no mother, and his father is abusive and has a drinking problem. Pap shows up only to beat his son and extort money from him—as portrayed in greater detail in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck has had to learn to live with his freedom because he has not had another choice.
Tom often pretends that he has had his freedom taken from him and that society drives him toward his choices. For instance, after Becky’s rejection, Tom thinks, “He had tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so […]. Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of crime. There was no choice” (104). However, Tom subjects himself to these internal monologues while wandering through the woods, free to do whatever he wishes. He considers his frequent inability to get others to do what he wants a lack of freedom.
Tom’s morality develops throughout the story, which results in a different sort of freedom. With his growing insight and perspective, Tom gains the freedom to do the right thing, because he can better determine what the right thing is. This feels liberating to him, which contrasts with Huck’s experience once the Widow Douglas takes over his care. Huck is desperate to return to his prior freedom, despite his new wealth and status. An adult looking back at childhood can probably view their earliest years as a time when they might as well have been Huckleberry Finn, compared to their adult responsibilities. With age comes the realization that the absence of freedom is more than simply not being able to indulge one’s whims and appetites at any moment.
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