Talking Big

Mark Twain gives hints of Tom Sawyer’s suspect character. They can be read comically at first glance, but this will come around again in a sad way in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

 1. He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him.

– Page 5

 2. Tom is inspired to trick Ben Rogers into painting the fence for him. He calls Ben “Big Missouri” in the passage below, because Ben had come walking along whooping like a steamboat.

 Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer “Big Missouri” worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents.

– Page 15

 3. Tom feeds to the cat, Pete, the painkiller he doesn’t want to take himself.

 4. Tom watches Aunt Polly’s despair and grief when he sneaks in and observes the goings-on in the house while he is missing and fear drowned. It thrills his own high opinion of himself,  (…the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his nature, too…Page 113) and he holds himself back from revealing he’s alive. He later lies about the night and embarrasses Aunt Polly. “You never think of anything but your own selfishness.”

 5. He did not care to have Huck’s company in public places.

– Page 189

The last is a little bit heart-breaking.