Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy

Tom Sawyer: Hero of Middle America 217
wash himself at a brook, early in the morning following the murder. A
second testifies to the identity of the murder knife. A third attests that
the knife in question was Muff's. In each case, Muff's lawyer declines to
cross-examine. The courtroom buzzes with dissatisfaction at the lawyer
for the defense, who appears to be letting his case go by
default. But
suddenly the lawyer addresses the court, saying that he has changed his
defense from that he had indicated in his opening remarks two days
before. Then he had intended to prove only that Muff had committed an
involuntary homicide under the influence of drink. Turning to the clerk,
he says. "Call Thomas Sawyer!"
In an atmosphere electric with puzzled
anticipation, the clerk administers the oath, an oath different from that
Tom had administered to himself and to Huck. Then Muff's lawyer leads
Tom, breathless and almost inaudible at first, through the sensational
narrative of the events he and Huck had witnessed from their hiding place
that night in the graveyard. "The strain upon pent emotion reached its
'
climax when the boy said: and as the doctor fetched around and Muff
Potter fell, Injun Joe jumped with the knife and
'
Crash! Quick as
lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his way through all
gone!"
opposers, and was
"Tom was a glittering hero once more the pet of the old, the envy
of the
young."
The heroism is on a more solid basis than before; but
Tom now pays a price for his glory. His days, we are told,
of splendor and
were "days
exultation,"
but his nights"were seasons of horror."
"Injun
eye."
What was
Joe infested aU his dreams, and always with doom in his
it that tempted Tom into this new heroism? All his glory hitherto had
been the consequence of tricks played upon others. Fear had dominated
him from the moment of the murder. Sympathy
for Muff Potter had
only led to the precaution of a second oath, until the trial was under way
and the tension began to build. The scene in the courtroom certainly was
gorgeousness"
appealed to his nature as strongly
as that in which he returned to play the lead at his own funeral. We
one whose "theatrical
have no introspective evidence of what it was that led to Tom's great
decision to risk Injun Joe's vengeance, or the doom invoked upon
himself in his own oaths. In Huckleberry Finn we are provided abundant
evidence of the hero's inward processes of moral crisis and of the
deliberations accompanying their resolution. The Huck of the later novel
articulates his private world much as does Hamlet in the great soliloquies.
In Tom's case,
we are never told in advance how the hero determines upon
his great deeds. In the whitewashing episode we are told only
inspiration ...
a great, magnificent
inspiration"
that "an
had burst upon him. At
the Sunday school we saw Tom mysteriously trading for tickets among
the boys, but his sudden presentation of himself for the prize Bible, in
the presence of Judge Thatcher, is almost as much of a surprise to us as
to Mr. Walters, the Sunday school superintendent. Later, in the midst of
in the night over the troubled
his pirating expedition, as he stands silently
know that "his face lighted with a
sleeping form of Aunt Polly, we only