Tom Sawyer, the main character of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, written by Mark Twain, is an
average boy who is bored with his civilized life and escapes these constraints by pulling pranks, and pulling
other mischievous things. The character of Tom, in the most part, is presented as a realistic and convincing
boy. He is kind and loving, but also cruel, stupid, and hypocritical of others at times, as well as, he shows
maturation throught the story. The story of Tom Sawyer,as well as being about a realistic character, is a
story that is intrusive to adults and children.
Tom is shown throughout the story as a typical boy of his time and place. He has a loving, happy
home, with his devoted Aunt Polly to care for him. He is mostly restricted by his home routine of prayers,
meals, chores, bedtime, and things like that, but when his routine life gets to dull, he has the nearby river
and woods, where he can go to escape. Though Tom is not " the model boy" of the village, he even hates
He plays boyish pranks on Aunt Polly, Sid, his friends, and everyone in town. He steals, lies, plays hooky,
fights, and goes swimming secretly, but he is a normal boy and this is what normal boys do at his age.
Tom is a clever, imaginative boy who has a good knowledge about human nature and knows how
to use it. He continually outwits his Aunt Polly, and also persuades other boys to do his work for him
without them even knowing of his trickery. One example of this is in the whitewashing scene, when his
Aunt Polly makes him whitewash the outside fence before he is allowed to play. He slyly conviences the
first boy by saying "...I don't see why oughtn't like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence
everyday?" (21) With this cunning use of words he manipulates the boy to whitewash the fence, which
leads to others also joining in to help. In the end, Tom has made a tidy profit as well as go...