Tom is engaged in and often the organizer of childhood pranks and make-believe games. Tom leads himself, Joe Harper, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher into increasingly dangerous situations. He finds himself in predicaments where he must put others concerns above his own concerns. Tom’s adventures to Jackson’s Island and McDouglas Cave take him away from society. This prepares him to return home with a new, more adult look on himself for the community. Earlier Tom looks up to Huck Finn as much older and wiser, but by the end his maturity has surpassed Huck Finn’s. Twain complicates Tom’s position on the border between childhood and adulthood. Twain’s harshest banter exposes the hypocrisy and the essential childishness of social institutions
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Twain shows us that these games can be more conventional than they seem. Tom who is highly concerned with conforming to the rules of behavior, that he has learned from reading. The boy’s obsession with superstition is likewise an addition to convention, which also mirrors the adult society’s focus o religion. Thus, the adult existence is more similar to childhood existence than it might seem. St. Petersburg is a community in which outsiders are easily identified. The most easily identified outsider is Huck Finn, because of his father’s drunkenness. Despite the community’s clear separation of outsiders from insiders seems to have a strong impulse toward comprehensiveness. Tom who is also an orphan has been taken in by Aunt Polly out of her love and daughterly responsibility. Injun Joe is the only resident of St. Petersburg who is completely excluded from the community. The townspeople were able to transform him after the death, through manipulation of his memory.
Twain minimizes Huck’s concerns, in favor of presenting the freedom that Huck’s low social status affords him. Huck can do whatever he pleases with very little to no restraint. His windfall, when then boys find the treasure, threatens to stifle his freedom. Huck is forced to change by Widow
Twain shows us that these games can be more conventional than they seem. Tom who is highly concerned with conforming to the rules of behavior, that he has learned from reading. The boy’s obsession with superstition is likewise an addition to convention, which also mirrors the adult society’s focus o religion. Thus, the adult existence is more similar to childhood existence than it might seem. St. Petersburg is a community in which outsiders are easily identified. The most easily identified outsider is Huck Finn, because of his father’s drunkenness. Despite the community’s clear separation of outsiders from insiders seems to have a strong impulse toward comprehensiveness. Tom who is also an orphan has been taken in by Aunt Polly out of her love and daughterly responsibility. Injun Joe is the only resident of St. Petersburg who is completely excluded from the community. The townspeople were able to transform him after the death, through manipulation of his memory.
Twain minimizes Huck’s concerns, in favor of presenting the freedom that Huck’s low social status affords him. Huck can do whatever he pleases with very little to no restraint. His windfall, when then boys find the treasure, threatens to stifle his freedom. Huck is forced to change by Widow