The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Brilliant!

The long summer days of childhood, how we all miss them so. I think, even 130 years after it was published, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer can make nearly all of us nostalgic for the days of just being a kid. I don’t think I played Robin Hood or Pirates like Tom did; I think I played World War II instead. And I think every boy dug for treasure at one point or another and had horrible superstitions about haunted houses. Life was full of possibilities and adventure as a kid, and Twain’s ability to evoke those memories is what makes Tom Sawyer a true classic. When you’re reading about Tom, Huck, and Becky, you’re not really reading about them, you’re reading about you when you were a kid. Admittedly, their adventures are our adventures writ large. And some of their escapades actually came to fruition (sometimes life would be better if it happened like fiction).

I think Twain makes an important point, however, when he reminds us that childhood days weren’t so carefree after all. He notes that “Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man's are to a man…” We tend to forget the bad and turbulent aspects of our childhood and remember how great it was to have a certain kind of freedom. We forget how soul-rendingly important it was that we get to have Billy sleep over or how bitterly disappointed we were when we didn’t get what we wanted for our birthday. So let us not forget that we had to take the bad with the good. Still, it all seems a lot better than paying bills.

Ah, youth. Or as they said on the Sopranos “yoot.” And speaking of dialect and dialogue, this is another area in which Twain excelled in Tom Sawyer. The characters spoke in the Missouri accent of the time (which, looking at a map, is more Southern than my mental map gives it credit for). You get a real feel for the characters because they speak in language that real people (of the time) used. When Huck says he’s “afeard,” it’s almost as if you know the voice from somewhere in the past. As a pretentious aside, Bernard Malamud would have done well to read Tom Sawyer before he sat down to write The Natural. It would have turned a middling book into a very good book; baseball players don’t say things like “I shall not”…rather they say, “I won’t” or “I ain’t a gonna.” Embrace the contraction Bernie!

But back to Tom Sawyer. I think the book also gives us a chance to reflect on childhood friends that we may have lost over the years. Certainly Tom and Huck were good friends, but not best friends like Tom was with Joe Harper. In fact, it’s not difficult to imagine Tom and Joe going to the Temperance Tavern together as adults. However, I just get the feeling (that might be proven wrong when I read Huck Finn) that Huck can’t be constrained by the ways of society and will always live by his vagabond life. It makes me sad to remember all those cool folks "I used to know."

Finally, I want to finish by mentioning the youthful courage of Tom and Huck. Even though situations looked grim at times (lost in the cave, following the robbers, et al.), and they were both certainly “afeard,” some moral center brought them to eventually do the right thing. I think it’s well worth remembering that there’s a hero in every boy.