Tom Sawyer Rhetorical Analysis

The story of Tom Sawyer helps readers understand further about the theme for it gives evidences of man's inherent imperfection. The story started with a catchy exposition as the writer uses diction within Tom and Aunt Polly's conversation. After tiring herself of looking for Tom for a long time, Aunt Polly finally found Tom hiding in her closet. "' Tom? Tom?'... A slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize the boy... 'What you been doing' in there?'...'Nothing'...' Look at your hands and your mouth. What is that truck?'... ‘I don't know Aunt'... 'Well, I know its jam. Forty times I've said leave that jam alone...'" This is successful for it clearly introduces the main characters right away, as well as what's going on, and

in addition, it already introduces the theme of the story. The first words that Tom speaks in this story already show the evil nature of man, that he will do anything just to get away from trouble. In Tom's situation, he lied by saying "nothing" and "I don't know" when there is actually something and he obviously knows what he's been doing. With the theme, the characters, and the past already introduced during the exposition by using a contrived dialogue, the writer provided himself with the convenience and ease of setting the story on track.
Aunt Polly depicts the natural goodness in a human since she decided to take care of his nephew Tom and to endure all the difficulties in dealing with his stubbornness because she loved him like his own child. The following quotations from Aunt Polly's soliloquy show this," He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute... poor thing... I aren’t got the heart to lash him somehow... I've got to do some of my duty, or I'll be the ruination of the child." Tom s great discovery was the law of human action when he got the other boys to white wash the fence. He lied and told them it was fun."...and Tom has discovered a great law of human nature; namely, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make it difficult to attain!"
Numerous incidents regarding Tom and Aunt Polly ,Huck wanting to save the widow, but not wanting to get killed by Injun JoeTom testifies for Muff Potter, but doesn't want to be killed by Injun Joe ,Tom, Joe, and Huck run off to become pirates, but Tom feels bad and goes back to leave a not for their parents .

Tom tells Aunt Polly he dreamt of all of it, but when she finds out, she thinks Tom wasn't actually going to leave a bark behindWhitewashing the Fence (All the boys are curious to feel what it is like to be whitewashing a fence, and pay Tom to do so. Society towards Muff Potter (When Muff Potter's knife is discovered near the dead body, Muff Potter is accused and is despised by everyone, but when found to be innocent, everyone adores him)Society towards Injun Joe (When it is found that Injun Joe was the actual murderer, wanted signs are posted everywhere and he is needed to be arrested at all costs. However, some people still want him to be granted a pardon, and start a

petition)
Tom’s unruly nature sends him (and those he drags along with him) through a series of increasingly dire situations that provide him with opportunities to define himself as a person throughout. As Tom travels deeper and deeper into darkness (both literally and metaphorically), he comes to gain understanding in a world where others constantly seek to fill his head with their flawed conceptions. Eventually, Tom comes to embody the traits of what twain defines as a hero. Through Tom’s adventures, readers come to understand that heroism manifests when people diverge from group human behavior and focus on what they as individuals have to offer. Through overcoming society’s conception of what it means to be human, Tom is able to achieve a greatness and heroism that is independent of what others expect of him.
Tom throughout the novel is faced with many people who seek to teach him how to conduct himself. There is his Aunt Polly, the minister, and the school master Mr. Dobbins employing a variety of methods to teach Tom how one should behave. However, these characters are not the ones who truly teach Tom by the end of this novel, and it is ironically through the very aspects of his personality that they want to temper that Tom accesses his sense of heroism. It is through his curiosity and sense of adventure that he stumbles upon the scene of Dr. Robinson’s murder, it is because of his willingness to lose favor with authority that he accepts Mr. Dobbin’s punishment in Becky’s stead, and it is through his cleverness that he is able to convince his friend Huckleberry Finn to accept his civilized life towards the novel’s conclusion. Twain conflates Tom’s heroic and scoundrel natures when the narrator states of Tom (when word of his heroism has spread) “There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging” (Twain, 73). It is through Twain’s characterization of characters like Tom that he exposes fascination with the conman. With Tom’s exploits, he “reveals his self-conscious engagement with the conman mythology” as he uses them to serve as “commentaries on the conflicting ideologies in late nineteenth-century America” (Seybold, 138). By utilizing characters that operate outside of what human society considers the norm, conmen like Tom Sawyer for example, twain can provide moral insight that may not be visible otherwise. To contrast with moments of moral insight that Tom and even his friend Huckleberry Finn, the townspeople consistently prioritize merely appearing as good people rather than actually being so. We see this with Mr. Walters and his obsession with impressing the local celebrity (Judge Thatcher) which leads him to almost awarding an undeserving Tom with a bible despite knowing of his inadequacy in the arena of religion. The character of Judge Thatcher in general is used as a vehicle for exposing the faults of the townspeople, as there is a lengthy passage describing several parties building a desirable façade for themselves in order to “show off” to the town celebrity who is apparently “showing off too” (Twain, 18). Everyone is attempting to make an impression in order to stand out, which puts them all on the same level in spite of their concentrated effort to avoid that exact conclusion. Twain uses this to solidify to the readers that even though these people have an authority over Tom, it does not necessarily mean they have a greater level of understanding than him. This is made explicitly clear when Tom takes a corporal punishment in the place of another student (and the judge’s daughter); to the readers this is unquestionably a heroic act, while to the authority figure, Tom is merely a troublemaker getting his just deserts. It is because of incidents like these that the nature of Tom’s heroism comes through to the audience; which is his ability to say and do things other people can’t.
Oxford dictionary defines a hero as “A person, typically a man, who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities”, but in the world twain created, true heroism almost runs contrary to that.

The admiration of the people in Tom’s society is meaningless, and this is made abundantly clear several times over the course of the story. The most striking example of this, is the town’s reaction to the death of Injun Joe, a character who passes as this novel’s principle antagonist and one who is described by scholars as having “virtually no redeeming backstory or moments of humanizing indecision” (Clark, 300). Despite this, the town mourns his death and actually creates a pardon-petition that many sign for his sake. The crimes that the people are actively seeking a pardon for in his honor include murder, and one the town came very close to convicting the wrong person for as well. Readers at this point know that Joe is this world’s equivalent to the devil, a fact that does not escape the narrator as he states in response to their passion for him that “If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky water-works” (Twain, 99). This incident, along with the town’s ever shifting opinion of Tom himself (which was emphasized at his unwarranted funeral by people who couldn’t stand him when they didn’t think he was dead) reveals

the opinions of the towns people for what they are: meaningless. The reader is not supposed to care what the townspeople think, they are a frivolous lot whose thoughts on the matter of heroism have no value. We see this in the previously mentioned incident where Tom takes a punishment for Becky. In that instance, only the reader and Becky know of Tom’s heroism, and that’s all that matters. Similarly with the character of Huckleberry Finn, who protects Widow Douglas and becomes an anonymous hero, is seen as something of a pariah among the townspeople. As the son of the town drunk, Huck Finn is seen as more of a nuisance than Tom. Tom and Huck both overcome their fears of Injun Joe and the public’s perception of them to accomplish heroic feats, and in doing so, they are successfully able to rebuke them both. Injun Joe is shown as someone who is a slave to his id, his basest human instincts. He’s portrayed as perpetually greedy, irritable, and monstrously vengeful. There’s a streak of pettiness that follows his character throughout the story, with him actually uttering the phrase “I swore I’d get even with you if it took a hundred years” (Twain, 34), which proves to be as pathetic as it is unsettling. Tom and Huck’s foiling of Injun Joe serves as a way for them to reject his beastly nature, and their acts of heroism are meant to reject the town’s hypocritical nature. The very qualities they send away by banishing Joe are the same qualities the town’s people ascribed to the boys. From seeing this, it seems that the method in which Tom and Huck achieved greatness appears to be in their steadfast refusal to be like other people.
In many ways, Tom’s half-brother Sid is his opposite. He presents an illusion of good behavior and kind heartedness to adults like his Aunt, when deep down he is mostly a vindictive child. With habits that include “glorying over Tom” (Twain, 13) during times