What Is The Theme Of Heroism In Tuck Finn

Tom throughout the novel is faced with many people who look for to teach him how to conduct himself. There is his Aunt Polly, the minister, and the schoolmaster Mr. Dobbins employs a lot of methods to teach Tom how one should behave. However, these characters are not the ones who truly teach Tom by the end of this novel, and it is ironically through the very aspects of his personality that they want to temper that Tom accesses his sense of heroism. It is through his snooping and sense of adventure that he stumbles upon the scene of Dr. Robinson’s murder, it is because of his eagerness to lose act of kindness with authority that he accepts Mr. Dobbin’s punishment in Becky’s position, and it is through his intelligence that he is able to make …show more content…
With Tom’s exploit, he reveals his self conscious engagement with the con man mythology, as he uses them to serve as “commentary on the belligerent ideologies in late nineteenth-century America. By utilizing characters that operate outside of what human society considers the conditions, con men like Tom Sawyer for example, twain can provide moral insight that may not be visible otherwise. To contrast with moments of ethical insight that Tom and even his friend Huckleberry Finn, the villagers every time, prioritize merely appearing as good people rather than actually being so. We see this with Mr. Walters and his obsession with impressing the local celebrity Judge Thatcher, which leads him to almost awarding an undeserving Tom with a bible despite knowing of his insufficiency in the arena of …show more content…
Huck, having had enough of his new life, decides to leave it behind, but using his trademark quick wit, Tom fabricates conditions to a fictional band that involve not needlessly misbehaving as they have done in the past. This convinces Huck and spares him from potentially going on a life-threatening adventure of his own for now that is. In a sense, it is Tom’s last act of heroism in the book and the one that shows how much he has grown the most. It is where twain makes the distinction between doing the right thing and breaking the rules. Tom isn’t a hero because he continually breaks rules, nor is he a hero because of his newfound willingness to follow them. The aspect about Tom Sawyer the cements him as a heroic figure is his ability to act against what people expect of him while still retaining the will to be true to him. Tom’s strengths are that he is clever and resourceful while the flaws in Tom are that he often uses those strengths recklessly. He achieves maturation when he is shown to direct those positive traits towards worthy causes, the heroism comes from the fact that he is able to do this in spite of the expectation of others or the potential danger to himself. The fascinating thing about the kind of heroism on display in is that