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Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy

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Tom Sawyer: Hero <strong>of</strong> Middle America 205<br />

upon him . . . and her lips pray God to give her back her .... boy<br />

would lie there cold and white and make no sign .... And<br />

But he<br />

such a luxury<br />

to him was this petting <strong>of</strong> his sorrows that he could not bear to have any<br />

worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too sacred<br />

for such contact . . . Then the scene shifts to the "deserted street . . .<br />

where the Adored Unknown lived,"<br />

for this is before the meeting with<br />

Becky. He lies on the ground beneath her window, clasping to his bosom<br />

the wUted flower that is the memorial <strong>of</strong> his secret passion. "And thus he<br />

would die out in the cold world, with no shelter over his homeless head,<br />

no friendly hand to wipe the death damps from his brow, no loving face<br />

to bend pityingly over him when the great agony<br />

came."<br />

This reenactment<br />

<strong>of</strong> the cross is interrupted when a window is raised and "a maidservant's<br />

discordant voice pr<strong>of</strong>aned the holy calm, and a deluge <strong>of</strong> water drenched<br />

the prone martyr's<br />

hero"<br />

remains."<br />

The erstwhUe "martyr"<br />

is now a "strangling<br />

who now further pr<strong>of</strong>anes what had been a holy calm with a curse,<br />

which is quickly followed by the sound <strong>of</strong> shattering glass. The mysteries<br />

<strong>of</strong> love, war, and rehgion are in close proximity.<br />

But the mood <strong>of</strong> martyrdom returns. After wooing, winning, and then<br />

losing Becky, he retreats into the woods beyond Cardiff HiU. "The boy's<br />

It seemed to him that life was but a<br />

soul was steeped in melancholy ....<br />

trouble, at best, and he more than hah envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately<br />

released .... If he only had a clean Sunday school record he could be<br />

aU."<br />

wiUing to go and be done with it This latter sentiment is one <strong>of</strong> the<br />

few expressions <strong>of</strong> what we might call conventional remorse. It should, <strong>of</strong><br />

course, be taken for what it is, namely, an excuse, since Tom has not the<br />

slightest inchnation for an early death. "Now as to this girl. What had he<br />

done? Nothing."<br />

Tom conveniently forgets the infidelity, or perhaps we<br />

should say hypothetical bigamy, that had so disturbed Becky. "He had<br />

meant the best . . . and been treated like a .... dog<br />

She<br />

maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die<br />

would be . . . sorry<br />

temporarily!"<br />

In the<br />

earlier scene Tom had wished that he could be drowned, "all at once and<br />

unconsciously, without undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by<br />

nature."<br />

Tom, we see, is the paradigm <strong>of</strong> that latter-day Christian, whose<br />

passion is the pleasant indulgence <strong>of</strong> his own self-love, expressed as grief<br />

at the neglect <strong>of</strong> others to take him at his own self-estimate. Or, more<br />

precisely, it is the pleasant contemplation <strong>of</strong> the grief or pain <strong>of</strong> others,<br />

for faUing to take him at his own self-estimate. The pleasure that he is to<br />

enjoy occurs in virtue <strong>of</strong> a death that is both painless and temporary! Tom<br />

is unmindful that, by the traditional Christian doctrine <strong>of</strong> the resurrection,<br />

aU death is temporary, for the faithful. Of course, traditional Christianity<br />

also taught that the soul <strong>of</strong> the individual found its fulfilment by the<br />

recognition given it after death, by God in Heaven. Tom demands that<br />

recognition, not by God, but by men (and women), not in Heaven, but<br />

on earth. Moreover, this is to happen, not in virtue <strong>of</strong> the grace and power<br />

<strong>of</strong> God, but in virtue <strong>of</strong> a certain secular skill. The fraud that Tom now<br />

perpetrates replaces traditional piety, in the same way that the traded

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