Introduction:
The Role of Tom Sawyer in the Novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is significant yet complex role that goes beyond mere companionship. Although the novel primarily centers on Huck’s moral growth and journey toward freedom, Tom functions as a contrasting character whose imaginative and romanticized outlook on life highlights Huck’s developing realism and ethical maturity. First introduced from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom brings with him a fascination for adventure, fantasy, and elaborate schemes, which often conflict with Huck’s practical and humane approach.
Tom’s role becomes especially important in the latter part of the novel, where his insistence on turning Jim’s escape into a grand, adventurous game delays the process and adds unnecessary complications. Through this, Twain subtly critiques the influence of romantic literature and the dangers of valuing adventure over human life and freedom. While Tom appears clever and imaginative, his actions reveal a lack of moral seriousness compared to Huck, who genuinely cares for Jim’s well-being.
Thus, Tom Sawyer serves as a foil to Huck Finn, helping to illuminate Huck’s moral transformation and the novel’s central themes of freedom, conscience, and the conflict between societal values and individual ethics.
Mark Twain’s ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ was published in 1876. Its popularity inspired the novelist to compose another tale of adventure with a slight difference. But he wanted to cash the popularity of his romantic hero Tom Sawyer also. With the purpose when just nine years after he published ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ he attempted at reminding reader of the former book of adventures. It was possible only if the central character of ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ is repeated in the new tale also. Tom Sawyer, therefore, appears in this novel but merely as a subordinate character. Tom is active in the opening of the tale. But he is absent in the middle. Once again, he becomes important in the latter part of the novel.
The Mischief Incarnate:
Tom Sawyer appears in this novel as the mischief incarnate. When Huck is sitting dull in his room smoking a pipe for all are asleep. Nobody will ever know about his smoking. The clock strikes twelve. He hears some sounds of movement in the trees. Directly he hears a ‘me-yow! me-yow!’ Huck respond in a low tone ‘me-yow! me-yow’ and puts out the candle. He slips down to the ground and crawls among the trees. He is happy to see that Tom Sawyer is waiting for him.
They go tip-toeing among the trees back towards the end of the widow’s garden. When they are passing the kitchen Huck falls over a root and makes a noise. Miss Watson’s big nigger named Jim is sitting in the kitchen door. He cannot see them but asks ‘What is that?’
Jim comes tip-toeing down and stands right between them. They can touch him. Jim asks.
‘Say who is you? Whar’s you? Dog my cats if I didn’t hear sumf’n.’
He sits on the ground between them. Just then Jim begins to breathe heavily-very soon he begins to snore. Huck feels comfortable. With Tom he creeps away on hands and knees. Tom asks Huck to tie Jim to the tree for fun. They take three candles from the kitchen. Tom places five cents on the table for pay. When they come out, Tom goes to Jim and slips his hat off his head and hangs over a branch.
The Spirit of Adventure:
Tom Sawyer’s heart is filled with the spirit of adventure. He displays it in this novel also. He takes Huck to a hill. When Tom and Huck reach the edge of the hill-top, they look down to the village but only three or four lights are twinkling. Perhaps these houses have patients. It is a starry night. Down by the village is the river. It is a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. They go down the hill and find Jo Harper and Ben Rogers. There are two or three more boys hid in the old tanyard. They unhitch a boat and pull down the river two miles and a half to the big scar on the hillside and go ashore.
They reach some bushes. Tom makes everybody swear to keep the secret. He shows a hole in the hill. Now they crawl with candles to have light in it. After about two hundred years, the cave opens up. Tom discovers a hole in the wall. They go along a narrow place and get into a kind of room.
Formation of A Gang-Romanticism:
Tom is romantic by nature. It is exposed when he forms a gang of pirates. Tom declares that they will start this band of robbers and call it Tom Swayer’s Gang. Everybody willing to join it shall have to write his name in blood. On a sheet of paper produced by Tom on which the oath is written. All read it and admire Tom for drafting it.
It swears every boy to stick to the band, never to tell any secret otherwise he and his family will be killed. They will wear a cross as a mark of the band. If anybody who is not the member uses the mark must be warned and if does not agree to give up, must be killed. Anybody who betrays the gang must be killed.
Then it is included that any person telling secrets shall be killed as well as his family. The problem is Huck has no family. Huck offers the name of Miss Watson for that purpose. On this ground Huck is included. Ben Rogers asks about the line of business of the gang.
Tom replies that it is robbery and murder. They will be highwaymen. They will stop stages and carriages on the road. They will have their faces masked and kill people and take their watches and money. Sometimes they will bring them to the cave and keep them till they are ransomed. Tom stress that he has read in books that they do such activities. It is asked what does the term ‘ransomed’ implies. Tom says he does not know. Perhaps it means they are dead.
It is decided such people shall be kept under guard ready to shoot them. Ben Rogers asks if they will kill women also. Tom replies that it is not written in books. According to books, people brought thus fell in love with these people and never wish to go home anymore. They elect Tom the first captain.
Tom’s Failure:
After a month Huck resigns Tom’s Gang. Other boys also do the same for they have robbed none, killed one but have pretended to be robbers and killers.
Tom talks about the arrival of Arabs with diamonds, camels, elephants and hundreds of guards but Huck sees nothing. When he tells about it to Tom he replies that Huck should read books and improve his imagination. Tom tells about tin lamps that produce genies if the lamp is rubbed.
Huck thinks over it for a day or two but then he concludes that he will not fill his mind with Tom’s lies.
Tom’s Reappearance:
When Jim is imprisoned and Huck is making efforts in finding out the nigger, he reaches Tom Sawyer’s aunt Sally who takes him for Tom. In his uncle’s wagon he goes to take his luggage and comes to meet his friend. Huck starts in the wagon. He is hardly half-way he sees a wagon driven by Tom Sawyer. He tells Tom that he is searching for Jim, the nigger. He wants to steal him to set him free. They make a plan that Tom will come later to pretend that he is Tom’s brother Sid Sawyer.
Half an hour later Tom enters and Aunt Sally takes him for a stranger first and then Sid Sawyer. They take dinner together. Then after they have a long talk. Tom tells how Huck was supposed to be killed by his father and then by Jim, the nigger.
Tom’s Intelligence:
Tom claims that he knows where Jim is. He is in hut down by the ash- hopper. In his opinion he is a prisoner there. Huck feels if he had Tom’s head, he would have avoided the duke and the king. However, Huck and Tom make a plan for Jim’s escape.
When they reach home, it is all dark. They go through the yard to note the reaction of dogs. Dogs don’t bark at them and it gives them a great relief. They reach the cabin in which Jim is supposed to be imprionsed. It has a hole but it does not help in any way.
By chance there they find an iron rod with which they break the chain and the door is opened. There is none inside. They think Jim may be in another cabin and from this one they can dig a way to the other but that will take a week.
The next morning, they try to be friendly with dogs as well as the nigger who takes food for Jim. Tom asks him if he takes food for dogs. He smiles and asks Tom if he wishes to look at that. Tom is willing for that. The nigger says that the prisoner is that runaway nigger who knows them well. Now the problem is solved. They go to Jim and whisper if he hears digging at night, he should not fear for it will be done by them.
Tom’s High Imagination:
In day light Huck and Tom arrange for light and something to dig. Tom has been reading tales of adventure. He thinks there will be need of a rope ladder and a shirt. On the shirt he will write secret message to the world. Tom forgets the fact that Jim does not know how to write. Tom suggests to use knife for digging. According to him prisoners never get proper tools for digging. Huck fears in this way digging will take not less than a month and a half. Besides Jim is too old to be dug out with a case-knife. But Huck takes a practical approach.
When they find that others are asleep that night, they go for digging. Tom tries but fails with his knife. He approves Huck’s idea of using proper tools. From the hole they talk to Jim who says that Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally are very kind to him. He says that he does not need the rope-ladder and shirt. They tell Jim that they are making a tunnel for his safe escape.
According they work for that night after night and make a passage to enter Jim’s cabin. He weeps on seeing his old friends. The simple plan is going to solve the problem. But Tom wants adventure. He does not like to steal a prisoner without a watchman or even a watch dog.
Tom wishes Jim should write on the wall of the cabin:
(1) Here a captive heart busted.
(2) Here a poor prisoner, for sook by the world and friends, fretted out
his sorrowful life.
(3) Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after
thirty-seven years of solitary captivity.
(4) Here, homeless and friendless after thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of Louis XIV.
But Jim is not able to write so much on the wall. He will take at least a year in that. Tom thinks of writing it by himself in blood got by killing birds.
Then Tom puts a letter under the front door. It says: Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keeps a sharp look-out. —Unknown Friend
Next night they stick a picture which Tom draws in blood of skull and crossbones on the front door. The next night they stick the picture of a coffin on the back door.
Tom’s Foolishness:
It is Tom’s foolishness that before stealing Jim he alarms the master. It is the result that an armed guard is posted at Jim. When Tom, Huck and Jim run away, they are chased and Tom gets a bullet in his leg. He bleeds. A doctor is called. It creates the situation in which Jim is arrested again. Tom too suffers physically but mentally he is happy for he regards as a part of adventure.
Conclusion—An Adventurer:
In private Huck asks Tom if he knows the fact about Jim’s being free why all the fuss he has been doing. He says that he had planned to go with him to have adventure on the raft and then tell him about his freedom.
Huck and Tom get Jim out of chains. When Aunt Polly, Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas come to know how the whole night Jim had been helping the doctor in treating Tom Sawyer, they give him what he wants to eat and ask him nothing to do.
Tom gives Jim forty dollars. Jim also talks a lot to them. Tom tells Huck that his father never returned. The amount of six thousand dollars and more is as it was Judge Thatcher left for then.
Now Tom is well. He wears the bullet around his neck. It confirms the viewpoint that Tom is a great adventurer. Mark Twain takes advantage of Tom’s this spirit and contributes two more tales of adventures entitled: “Tom Sawyer Abroad’ (1894) and ‘Tom Sawyer Detective’ (1896).