The Characters of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain did a great job of bringing the characters of Tom Sawyer to life. Twain used vivid descriptions and deep personalities to make his stories interesting.

The most prominent character in this story is Tom Sawyer. Tom Sawyer is a whole and true miscreant. Tom lives with his aunt, Polly, and cousin, Sid. He is a very smart boy, but he doesn’t care about learning or education in general. You can tell that he is very smart because he was able to memorize every line of the book that he holds so dearly to his heart, Robin Hood. Yet at the same time, he is not able to memorize a few very simple lines of the bible for Sunday school. Even though it may appear that Tom is a very simple character, he actually has a lot of depth. He believes in all sorts of crazy rituals like swinging dead cats while saying an incantation to get rid of warts or going out into the forest and finding a stump full of spunk-water and saying an incantation to get rid of warts. Tom is not a good boy when he is told to be a good boy; but when it really comes down to it, he always makes the right choice. An example is he would skip school some days because he was expected to go to school and be the best and smartest boy he could be, but he wanted to be the opposite of what everyone else wants him to be. Yet when Tom and Huck witnessed the murder of the town doctor and a grave robbing, Tom feels compassion and sorrow for the man that was wrongfully blamed for the crime. He even brings the man, Potter, comforts while Potter is in jail. Tom might have been doing this just to ease his own conscience, but at least he went and helped the innocent man out. Usually though, Tom’s motivation for doing what he does is just to have fun and do the opposite of what everyone expects from him. He will skip school to go swimming because swimming is one of the enjoyments in Tom’s life, and because he wants to do the opposite of what all the adults and good kids think he should do, which is being a good boy and going to school. Tom is an overall interesting character, and his personality just adds to how interesting he is. So far in the story, I have seen Tom’s personality as fun, boisterous, argumentative, and in-control. This personality makes him really come to life, and seem so realistic.

Another character in the story that really comes to life is Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn is the town’s child pariah. He is the son of the town’s drunk, so he has to take care of himself. Also because of his father, he has to wear clothes that don’t fit and are in terrible condition, sleep wherever he can find a place to sleep, and can miss school and church whenever he feels like it. All of the other boys envy his life and his choices, but I feel that Huck doesn’t actually enjoy his circumstances. When Mark Twain writes about Huckleberry from Tom’s point of view, Tom yearns to have a life like Huck’s; yet I feel it must be hard for Huck to live out on his own with no one ever there to take care of him. Huck though believes in many of the same crazy things that Tom believes in. He thinks that dead cats and incantations can heal warts and sealing secrets with blood. Huckleberry’s motivations from my point of view are just to have fun. He goes swimming when he wants to go swimming and he doesn’t go to school because he wants to do other things that are more fun at the moment. He doesn’t really consider the fact that he should be going to school and church for the long term future, instead he only thinks about doing fun things now. I think that Huck is a fun person, yet he can become overly scared and dramatic. He can have fun with Tom and be one of the boys; but after Tom and Huck witnessed the murder of the town doctor, Huck became scared and irrational. He started to lose his cool in a time of panic. Yet overall Huckleberry is a very fun and kind person who is just down on his luck and has a hard time catching breaks.

Another character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is Tom’s aunt, Polly. Aunt Polly is a kind woman who cares for Tom and Tom’s cousins Sid and Mary. Aunt Polly is one of the nicest old ladies you could meet, and she takes as good of care of Tom as possible. She doesn’t enjoy punishing Tom for his terrible behavior, but sometimes Tom just has to be punished because he is such a bad child like all the times that he skips school to go swimming. She is very formal and established, for example she has a pair of glasses that she only wears for style and not for looking through. She overlooks Tom’s bad behavior when it is lesser things like stealing sugar during breakfast because she cares for him so much. She believes that is better to let boys be boys and let them get their badness out than punish them and force them to go to school because she is very lenient with Tom and Sid. I believe that Aunt Polly is motivated by her love for Tom and Sid, and that is why she takes such good care of the two no matter what they put her through. Her personality is kind, caring, and sweet; that is why she is the perfect guardian for Tom, she balances him out.

Yet another character is Tom’s cousin Sid. Sid is a good boy compared to Tom. He is not the town’s perfect boy, but he is a good boy. Sid is also raised by Aunt Polly, yet he doesn’t disobey her. Sid often spies on Tom trying to get Tom in trouble in a brotherly way. I feel that Sid does his best and tries his best, and Mark Twain tries to use Sid as a reference point of how bad Tom really is. Sid is often “punished” by Tom for having told on Tom or getting Tom in trouble, but you can definitely sense a brotherly relationship between the two. I think that Sid is motivated to get Tom in trouble because he is jealous of Tom being able to go break the rules with his Aunt barely caring at all. Also he has a brotherly love of Tom because of all the experiences that they have had together. Sid has a personality that is a mix of being a good, studious kid and being a boy like Tom who does whatever they want. Sid definitely cares about being a good boy, but he also has learned badly from Tom and has some rebelliousness in him. Sid believes that Tom shouldn’t be the only boy in the family that is well-known, whether that is good or bad.

The final character that I will talk about is Muff Potter. Muff Potter was the drunk that went grave robbing with Injun Joe and the Dr. Robinson, and was wrongfully blamed by Injun Joe for the murder of Dr. Robinson. Even though he is a drunk, I believe that Muff Potter isn’t a bad man; he has just made bad choices. Even after he thought he had murdered Dr. Robinson, he didn’t run away; instead he stayed to face the consequences of what he had done. Muff Potter only went out grave robbing because he was drunk and for the money, so I think that his motivations are quite simply to get money. His personality is very drear, and he seems kind of uneducated because he was unable to figure out that he was not the one that murdered Dr. Robinson. I think he believes that justice should always be served and that is why he stayed in own even after the whole police force was sent after him. 

Things That Once Were

Blurred smudges moving in and out of my field of view.  A light blazing like fire into my eyes. My left leg is burning up in shots of pain. I cry out, but nothing escapes my dry lips. As one of the dark smudges moves closer and I can faintly make out a teal blue mask with glasses perched atop it. Behind the glasses is a soft pair of eyes, but I can’t look at them because my eyes are closed in pain. He says to me, “Just relax. It’s going to be over soon.” Quickly the light started fading along with everything in the room. My vision just fading to black as if in a movie. It seemed that in an instant everything was there and then gone. But the burning pain was gone and a feeling of peace was entering my mind. It is taking root and saving me.

Two Months Before

My rough, coarse hands grabbing onto hard iron. The buzzer rang out echoing off the walls. Lurching forward off my metal podium I glided through the air with my arms extended to a crisp point at the top. Then my body just hung there and all I could feel was weightlessness. With a sudden jolt my skin started sliding into the water and I feel tranquility knowing that I am in my element again. Knowing that I am yet again in my place of calm and happiness and also knowing that I was away from the world above that was always hustling and bustling. A world that never stopped to just pause and rest a moment.

As my body starts to go into the pre-rehearsed complex motion of the butterfly, I look over to my left and right and see nobody around. Looking down I see the halfway marker at the bottom of the pool and know it is time to come up to the surface to start breathing. My muscles flex and feel almost alive as they ascend to the surface. The water tension was not going to break of its own accord so in a bubble of water I pushed my body to the surface. As the surface tension finally started breaking, I did a great lunge and knew I was up.

I took a stroke with my head still down and pointing at the water. Two kicks later my head started breaking the water, my body doing the work for me. I sucked down a heap of air and threw my head back down into the water just before my hands plunged back down. This cycle I repeated down the pool until I did a neat flip turn and then repeated the cycle back down the rest of the length of pool.

My hands slamming into the side of the pool and I felt a sense of joy. Knowing I had just made the U.S. Olympic team. The U.S. Olympic team! As I swam over to the ladder that jutted down into the pool I felt a surge of happiness from a well deep within me.

When I pulled my head up above the water a swarm of cheering almost made me duck my head back under the water. It was like a dream, a fantastic dream; but it wasn’t, it was real. When I stepped out of the water onto the pool deck I was almost pushed back into the water by a swarm of my friends, and family.

My coach was the first person to reach me though and he said, “Great job Andre, but now we are going to have to work even harder.” And it seemed to me he just always had to remind me that I was going to have to practice even harder.

When my family got to me they started congratulating me in their own way.

“We are so proud of you,” my mother sobbed.

“You were fantastic out there,” my father told me.

And of course my sister sarcastically remarked, “Congratulations, now you are a big snooty hot-shot swimmer.”

My friends finally reached me and put me back in line by saying things like, “Great, now we’re going to have to go to London just to watch you swim.”

But I couldn’t even hear them talk to me because my name was being put on the board of people who had made the U.S. Olympic team. It had been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. This is by far the happiest moment of my life.

Present Day

Water just flows through its states of being unlike anything else. It is always flowing to the next place, whether that place be a lake, river, or ocean it is always moving to the next phase; one continuous cycle.

If only life could be that simple, my brain said, If only we can flow to the ocean and then magically get to start over in a place that we already were at.

I just wish that I can someday go back to being the professional swimmer I used to be, my brain continued as I looked down at my amputated leg and crutches.

Without realizing it my gaze rose to look at the dark blue, tumbling water. My heart surged with jealousy, because it can cycle back to where it has been. My gaze dropped as I was startled to see myself become jealous of water. It seemed that I had become nothing more than an ex-swimmer who had nothing left in life.

So I crutched my way back to town over the wet sand that you can only find in Washington. The hard, sturdy grass cut across my foot as I hobbled my way to the shabby yet homey town. The sign that greets the summer tourist was just an old piece of driftwood that Willappa Bay’s strong winds had molded into a faint reminder of the tourist town that once was.

It was starting to rain so I hobbled even faster into the Old West-like town. Typical for Washington, the rain started even though the sun was bursting through the clouds. Yet I can see no rainbow because it isn’t a happy day, it is just another hard life as a person that, just like this tourist town, once was.

My little house I called “home” was on the other side of town, and I was in no mood to put up with the soaking rain so I stepped inside a deserted shop. I quickly pretended that I was looking at some of the merchandise. The young store clerk quietly averted her eyes because she felt sorry for my state of being.

Because it was a bookstore it was easy to give a false impression that I was reading the books, and eventually I found a book that was actually interesting. So without taking my eyes away from the book I hobbled over to a chair and sat down with a creak of the old wicker on the hard wood floors; and this is how I stayed for a long time, so long I think that the store clerk left. But as the darkness grew so did my curiosity in the book, so I decided I could stay a while longer.

It wasn’t until I heard the bustling from in the back of the store did I realize that I had stayed for hours. And I could tell the old woman that came to close the store was surprised to see me still reading.

“You know you’re supposed to buy the books before you read them,” she commented.

When I didn’t respond she compressed her lined face in fake anger and said bluntly, “Just because you’re crippled doesn’t mean that I’m going to cut you any slack.”

And with those words I had no idea what to say. Out of shock, my jaw hung open a little. I opened my mouth a little wider trying to get a few words out, but only air came out of my mouth.

“You can’t just expect everyone to stop and gawk at you,” she continued as if nothing had happened, “I can tell that you aren’t the kind of person who wants to be treated like you are a lesser person, and you hate it when people avert their eyes.”

She has truth to this I thought; but even though her dark brown eyes conveyed wisdom, all I could receive was pain and hatred.

“I see the way that people look at you and how you get a look of anger on your face,” she said.

“Yes, but was that really necessary?” Was all that stumbled out of my mouth..

“Well it appears that the only way it is going to get through your thick skull is if someone puts it bluntly.”

“You don’t know what this has done…”

“Oh yes I do,” she said while her eyes mocked me, “you were a big hot-shot swimmer and it ruined your career. Everyone in town knows your story. Now just let me say that you must understand that there are other things in life than just winning. You could…”

But before she could finish her sentence I got on my crutches and hobbled out of the shop as fast as my crutches would take me. I ignored the rain and worked my way over the old road to the muddy beach. The bottom of my crutches were getting stuck every once in a while in the soaking wet sand. Staring out over the ocean I felt jealous again of the water, but it faded much faster than it did earlier. I knew that I understood that the water did have it easy by being able to cycle back, but I could also “cycle” back to my old life if I really tried. The old woman was right; there is more to life than just winning. So glancing out at the dark, ominous, and turbulent ocean; I realized that it would be hard to remake myself, but it was possible. Therefore I forced my face away from the ocean, and crutched back into town, knowing I had just taken my last look at the ocean.

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What is an Appropriate Book?

What is an appropriate book for children and young adults to read? Some organizations around the United States are creating groups that censor books, and require some books to not be able to be read in schools. Yet there are still many against this and many more still that aren't informed.

So what does a parent do if they do not want their child to read a book that is in the school library or that is on an English reading list? My opinion is that they should have the right to request a new book for their child to read, but first they should be informed about the facts.

The facts are simple, what censorship organizations is their opinion. It isn't a steadfast rule that what they believe is inappropriate may be wrong. These organizations say that some books are wrong because it promotes "devil worship" and non-bible worship, but according to the Constitution there should be no prohibiting of someone's religion. It seems to me that if the schools agree with these organizations then they may be in fact agreeing with the church, which is unconstitutional because the schools are government run.

But parents should have a right to decide for their children what they can and can't read. So why should organizations and school districts stop them? It is in their rights to be able to make that kind of decision. So I believe that parents should have the power to limit or expand what their children read. Yet if they are in organizations, they should not have the ability to limit what other parents can have their children reading.

Who Matter's Most?

Who is the most important person to look after? Who is the person that matters the most? While Scrooge is in the command of the third ghost, Scrooge witnesses people talking in the street about how he always looked out for number one. Like one person said, “Ever person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did.” Scrooge definitely looked out for “number one”, but in a bad way. It is fine to look after yourself before others, but only in moderation. You should take care of your health and mental wellness, but Scrooge took it way too far. He never did anything to help anyone else, even if they almost begged him. He should have taken care of himself, but he never took care of others too. It is funny but sometimes people are so focused in helping themselves be OK, that they forget to help others get back on their feet. Scrooge definitely based his decisions in life off of his own health and wellness instead of thinking of what he could do for others.

A Look at a Miser's Life

December 24, 1843
              Today was as drear as any other day. People wishing a Merry Christmas! A Merry Christmas! Bah! A merry Christmas is a joke. There is nothing merry about giving out handouts to the poor. The wretched, disgusting people who should be thrown into jail. When my nephew visited he tried to convince me that being a dirty, piece of filth who celebrated Christmas was a good thing. He invited me over to his house to be merry and cheerful, like every other lazy, oblivious person on Christmas. Two gentlemen had the nerve of coming into my office, disturbing my work and asking for a handout for the poor. Gentlemen are not what they are, they are annoying people who should not be allowed to walk into the world. They supported the idea of giving the poor handouts instead of sending them to valuable institutions that I have put my precious money into like prisons, Union workhouses, and treadmills. All the other people on this planet need to learn that being a low-life is a shameful life, and that we shouldn't give into giving handouts to these monstrous people.
Scrooge