Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy

208
Interpretation
as long a dream as that, without it!"
any mistakes in Eventually the hoax
is revealed because Joe Harper had told his mother of Tom's having left the
camp that Wednesday evening. Poor Aunt Polly, who had rushed to teU
Mrs. Harper of Tom's prophetic powers, is subject instead to remarkable
embarrassment. Yet Tom has a knack for profiting from the exposure of
his deceptions no less than from the deceptions themselves as we saw in
the case of the coUar thread, and as we guessed in the case of the "curtain
of
charity."
In the pocket of his old jacket he stiU had the bark on which
pirates."
When he
he had written, "We ain't dead we are only off being
pleads in extenuation of his fakery that he had come over that night to
reheve Aunt Polly's anxieties and not to gloat over them, she says, '"Tom,
Tom, I would be the thankfuUest soul in this world if I could beheve you
ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never did, and I
know it, Tom."
He pleads that this is the truth, and Aunt Polly begs him
not to lie, that it only makes things a hundred times worse. Tom insists,
against all probabUity and reason, that this is not a lie. Aunt Polly rejoins
that she would "give the whole world to beheve that it would cover up
a power of
sins."
Tom explains that it was only the thought of the funeral
that made him change his mind and put the bark back in his pocket. Then
he teUs her how he kissed her as she slept, to which she responds with
infinite pathos. Tom has so wrought upon her that her will to believe in
him is equal in fuU to the great power of faith that is in her. It will require
but a single scrap of evidence to make him the complete beneficiary of that
faith. When Tom leaves she turns toward the closet with its tattered
jacket. Her heart is overwhelmed with its burden of love, and she reasons
herself into justifying him,
her hand to take the garment . . . and twice she
whatever the evidence. "Twice she put out
refrained."
Finally, "she
fortified herself with the thought: 'It's a good lie it's a good lie I won't
let it grieve
me.'
... A
moment later she was reading Tom's piece of bark
through flowing tears and saying: 'I could forgive the boy, now, if he'd
committed a million
sins!'"
redemption and glory are complete.
As far as Aunt Polly
is concerned. Tom's
Before turning to the culminating episode of Tom's piracy, let us
consider it against the background of certain alternatives. Tom's favorite
game is that of Robin Hood. We see him at it twice, once with Joe Harper
and once with Huck Finn. Joe and Tom play at it regularly and store
their equipment in the woods beyond Cardiff Hill. What they do is, in
fact, to play roles in episodes drawn from the story, just as if it were a
stage production. It is not a game, played to win. It is, rather, a dramatic
ritual. Here we first see Tom's own kind of scriptural authority. But Huck
has never heard of Robin Hood, and Tom tells him, "Why, he was one
of the greatest men that was ever in England and the best. He was a
robber."
Huck asks who he robbed. "Only sheriffs and bishops and rich
people and kings, and such like. But he never bothered the poor. He
square."
loved 'em. He always divided up with 'em perfectly Huck rejoins,
been a brick."
To which Tom replies, "I bet you he
"Well, he must 'a'