Rumors In The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

Rumors. One hears them everywhere. Whether it’s at school, with siblings, at work, etc. Rumors have carried its way throughout centuries and centuries beyond. Rumors are everywhere, including in the book, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. In the book “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, a huge theme of “the goodness of an individual cannot be measured by social opinion alone” plays a role in society. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is about a young boy, named Tom, who faces different situations in his childhood. In Tom’s time, people judged other people by what the rest of society says. Just like a rumor. The reader is probably thinking, “Well, we have judgement in the present as well”. That is correct. And that is the author’s point.

He doesn’t go to church, he doesn’t go to school, and all the mothers of children who are Huck’s age don’t want their children playing with him. Every mother in town judges him on his every-day standards. On page 38, Mark Twain writes “Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him.” This shows that the mothers did not want their kids to play with Huck because they believed he was a terrible influence to their children. They also hated Huck because he drew their children in to be like him, even though it is not technically Huck’s fault that all the kids want to be like him. Also on page 38, Mark Twain writes “Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.” This shows by saying Tom was like the rest of the boys, that all of the boys wanted to be like Huck, and all of them were kept under strict order by their mothers. Therefore, Huckleberry Finn gets judged mostly by society