Categories: Books

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Childish Reality

Mark Twain once said, “My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” It is fun to imagine what Mark Twain must have been like as a child, and the best picture one can find of this are in his books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which are said to be loosely based on Twain’s own childhood. As an adult, Twain was able to look back on these childhood adventures and write about them in stories rich with social commentary. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain presents a satirical look at adult society by depicting an intricate child society that mimics the adult world, and by showing adult figures behaving childishly.

Although the setting is a farm town where most of the children have “never seen as much as fifty dollars in one mass before,” (139) the children have a sophisticated system of economics. Their system is revealed in the second chapter where Tom convinces the boys that whitewashing a fence is such an entertaining amusement that he is hesitant to allow anyone else to take over the “fun.” Tom learns a lesson in supply and demand, “that in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain” (12). Because Tom is so convincing, the boys are willing to “pay” to whitewash. The children do not have money; their currency consists of “valuable” objects such as marbles, a piece of glass, tadpoles, firecrackers, and four pieces of orange peel, all of which Tom acquires in trade for a chance to whitewash (12). Later, Tom and Huck are discussing the search for buried treasure, and Huck muses that it might take all summer. Tom thinks this may be true, but replies, “Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred dollars… or a rotten chest full of di’monds. How’s that?” Although the search for treasure is, in all reality, just play, they are using adult logic to decide if the labor is worth the payoff. Overall, the children’s imitation of adult economics shows how the children are in the process of being interpellated into the adult society, at least as far as financial matters are concerned.

Tom and his friends believe firmly in superstition, practicing a realm of chants and rituals that seems to resemble the adult society’s attitude towards religion. In chapter six, Tom and Huck are discussing how to rid a person of warts, and the remedies they discuss sound almost religious. One remedy involves dipping your hand in stump water, which seems similar to dipping fingers in holy water. Plus, there are chants to go along with this, such as “Barleycorn, barleycorn, injun-meal shorts, spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts” (35). The way the children firmly believe in these rituals demonstrates their faith, the same way the adults have faith in prayer. When Tom finds a lone marble buried in the ground, which seems to go against a superstition he had previously believed, it says “Tom’s whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundation” (47). This is much like how Aunt Polly prays with such fervor. Although her faith seems genuine, one can only help but wonder if her faith would have been shaken had Tom not come back when he was presumed dead while off playing pirate.

Although these Sunday school attending children trade the tickets they earn for memorizing Bible verses for dead cats, there is evidence that the children have been somewhat interpellated into the ideology of their parents’ church. When Tom, Huck, and Joe are off playing pirate, Tom and Joe have trouble falling asleep, as their conscience nags them. They feel guilty for running away, and more particularly for the meat they stole because, “there was a command against that in the Bible” and then they can only fall asleep after they “inwardly resolve” that they will not steal anymore (75). While they boys do not realize it, what they are doing is repenting, in a Biblical way. This shows how, despite their tendency to prefer superstition to religion, the church has functioned as an ISA in interpellating the children into the dominant religious beliefs of the society.

While the adults in the story seem religious and proper, in many ways, they are just like the children. In chapter four, the children are in Sunday school and are introduced to Judge Thatcher. The adults begin to behave exactly like the children, showing off for the important figure. While Tom had been showing off by making faces and pulling hair, the young teachers now show off by disciplining students, and all of the teachers seemed to find a reason to end up by the pulpit, closer to the Judge (23). The teachers’ behavior is the same as Tom’s in trying to get the attention of Becky Thatcher.

Some of the adult characters in the book also exhibit child-like behavior in their lack of logic. Aunt Polly relies on the advice of health journals that she subscribes to, despite the fact that the “journals of the current month customarily upset everything they had recommended the month before” (66). This is comparable to the boys who rely on their superstitions and are willing to try any new chant or remedy, despite it being different than they had previously heard. The whole town also demonstrates how childish they can be in their quick judgment and gossip about Muff Potter, quickly saying that “he’s the bloodiest-looking villain in this country,” (120) before Muff has even been sent to trial. In the very next chapter, after Muff has been proved innocent, “the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it has abused him before” (124), revealing how these sophisticated, logical adults take on the fickle traits of children.

Furthermore, while the boys’ curiosity often puts them in sticky situations, the adults in the story are just as curious. When Tom tells Aunt Polly that he wrote her a note on sycamore bark and intended on giving it to her, she cannot just simply believe him. She runs to the closet to look in his jacket, but stops herself several times before she finally does just have to look and does find the note in his pocket. This note is as gratifying to Aunt Polly as secretly hearing Aunt Polly’s lamentations while he was missing was to Tom. Later, towards the end of the story, after Tom and Huck have found the treasure, even the grown men cannot help their curiosity and every abandoned house is “ransacked for hidden treasure- not by boys, but men” (180). Although these same men would probably have told the boys they were silly for searching for treasure, once the thought of treasure becomes a reality, they cannot stop themselves from such childish behavior. It seems that the story seems to take place around the mid 1800s, and one cannot help but think of these men in correlation to the thousands of people who were, at that time, heading west to California in search of gold.

There is a cliché saying that “boys never grow up; they just get bigger toys.” While this saying is amusing, it does seem to be true, although could also be extended to girls as well. The children in Tom Sawyer have a world that is not much different from the adult world around them, and the adults who are responsible for these children act much like children themselves. In many ways that is how it has always been and always will be. Adults like to think that they are much smarter and more capable than children, but in reality, children have a great deal of agency and tend to be especially logical as well.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1998.