Using a method of blending his own personal memories and the experiences of his schoolmates, Mark Twain creates a novel about childhood freedom and the necessity of labor. The book is about an adventurous boy, Tom Sawyer, growing up in the small town of St. Petersburg around the 1840s. He and his accomplice, Huckleberry Finn, are on a hunt for buried treasure, so that they can be like their hero, Robin Hood, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Together the boys learn for themselves and from each other as they encounter many obstacles along the way. Thought Tom is preoccupied with finding wealth, escaping from a murderous thief, trying to stay out of trouble and memorizing verses for Sunday school, he ends up finding maturity and growth in himself.
Twain’s theme is shown in his other novels, as well as in other bad boy books that gave him inspiration for this one. To begin with, in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, shows that he never really got over being forced to work in a warehouse as a small boy. Dickens spent the day sticking labels on shoe blacking bottles, focusing more on the hard times of growing up. Then in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain explores the darker places of the mind and American society. It’s also considered the greater of the two masterpieces. To conclude, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain seeks out the joyful moments, making it easier to believe in freedom by never letting the boy heroes in his stories turn into adults. Using these novels with a similar theme, Twain gets his message across both in the plot and in the characters.
The author puts so much heart into the theme of childhood freedom that the reader can personally relate to almost everything that’s happening in each chapter, one crazy adventure right after the other. First, Twain clarifies that imagination is not child’s play and calling it that denies the richness and beauty in it. Children overflow with so much energy when it comes to make believe, and they use it like their own power to turn reality into fun. He brings this out so strongly that one will almost feel as if one is right there with Tom and Huck inside McDougal’s Cave searching high and low for Injun Joe’s treasure.
Second, the freedom in imagination is unpolluted by selfishness and meanness. For example, the boys want to be robbers, but they don’t realize that a robber is a bad person; they just think it’s someone who gives money people who don’t have any, because that’s the type of robber that Robin Hood was. Last, all objects inspire in children a sense of wonder, whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant. To them, everything has value, because the entire world is full of room for their imaginations. These points are shown through the way Twain portrays Tom’s own childhood make-believe.
In the beginning, Tom uses a delightful trickery that is taken with a subtle approach, sometimes making people feel good about themselves through his cleverness. First, he always manages to escape Aunt Polly right when she’s about to catch him. When she finds him hiding in the closet, after searching for him so she could give him his punishment, he says to her, “My! Look behind you aunt!” Being the gullible woman that she is, she, of course does so, giving the boy enough time to slip out the door and scramble over the fence.
In addition, he uses the human weakness of coveting to make himself rich with junk in his efforts to turn work into play. He manages to get a bunch of neighborhood kids to whitewash his Aunt Polly’s fence by making them jealous of his time-consuming chore, telling them, “Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence everyday?” One by one, the naïve victims traded Tom their most prized possessions such as an apple, a kite and a dead rat on a string just for a chance to have the experience, realizing later that it wasn’t so great. The most significant one is how he uses his extraordinary imagination to help him get his way. After running away to an island, Tom’s homesick friends were about ready to return home until he changed their minds and decided to stay after all. Though Tom starts off using his wisdom for his own good, he figures out the right way later on in the story.
The author doesn’t put as much enthusiasm in revealing the necessity of labor in the book, but then again neither do the readers. To begin with, throughout the book we’re always on Tom’s side, feeling his freedom disappear while we watch his humorous struggles as he begins to transform into an adult. Next, there’s the matter of Tom and Huck’s opinions about adulthood, which are very much the same, but have their own personalities. Tom resists what everyone knows must come, which is the time when growing up is done and all fun will seem to stop. Huck shares almost the same view, but he feels that work in any form should be avoided. Both boys are free spirits, whose lives are unburdened by labor and social obligations.
Finally, Twain shows a knowledge of what adults and children do to each other. Adults can’t stand having a child put one over on them, so they punish them with manual labor. Since children are only lazy when it comes to work imposed on them by others, the endless cycle seems to continue. Though the children in Twain’s stories win, all the battles the adults will end up winning the war, because the children will grow up some day.
As Tom matures, down the road he reveals the sweeter, more compassionate, innocent, little boy inside. To start, he realizes that his Aunt Polly cares about him and that’s why she’s always trying to tame him. After running away from home, the town is under the impression that he and his friends have drowned. Tom doesn’t want his aunt “to be uneasy about them, because they hadn’t drowned.” So he sneaks back with “the bark he had wrote on to tell her they’d gone pirating…” and that they weren’t dead. But after seeing his aunt, he decides to kiss her, “because he loved her so, and she laid there moaning and he was so sorry.”
Next, he nobly takes the blame for someone else so that they don’t get in trouble. When Becky, Tom’s crush, accidentally tears a page in the teacher’s forbidden book, Tom feels sorry for her and tells the teacher, “I done it.” Leaving Becky in grateful adoration hugging him and saying, “Tom, how could you be so noble!” The most important change is when he tries to do what he knows is best for his friend, even if it means losing his fantasy figure of freedom. Tom forces Huck to stay with the widow instead of on his own by enticing him with a membership in his new robber gang. Huck gets so excited that he leaves behind the old wood shed he once called home to go back with Tom. With these early maturity changes in Tom, it foreshadows that he will eventually be completely caught by adulthood.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer can help children to relate and parents to remember. With its fast pace and exciting chapters, it’s quite hard to put it down and come back to reality. Children can see a bit of themselves in the characters and let their young imaginations fly freely, while adults will return back to it every now and then to remember those carefree days. Boys, girls, men and women of all ages will enjoy reading about Tom’s amusing and scary victories over adults and associating them to their own childhood imaginations.
