Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy

Tom Sawyer: Hero of Middle America 221
Lawrence, had finaUy reached an impasse. But one day during the noon
in the lock.
recess, Becky passes the schoolmaster's desk and sees the key
The master keeps a book there, the identity of which is the great and
tormenting mystery of the school. Becky turns the key, opens the drawer,
and presently is inspecting the anatomy text with its handsomely engraved
frontispiece, "a human figure, stark
naked."
At that moment Tom steps up
behind her, Becky starts, and as luck would have it, tears the page. Becky
bursts into tears: her terror of discovery and punishment thereupon
multiply a thousandfold her grievance against Tom.
What old Dobbins does in such cases is to demand of the class that the
guUty party step forward. When no one volunteers, he asks each of the
scholars in turn, fixing his gaze full upon him or her, to discover evidences
of guUt. Such a procedure might not succeed with such a hardened
prevaricator as Tom, but it cannot faU with such an innocent as Becky.
Becky might have confessed had she not been so paralyzed by fear. The
that is the sure punishment for such a crime appears to her in aU
beating
the lurid hght of eternal damnation. But Tom has been licked times
without number. We have seen him dehberately court a licking
to be sent to sit with the girls, the first day Becky
in order
had come to the school.
He can't understand why Becky is so bitter at the prospect. "That's just
hke a girl they're so thin-skinned and
chicken-hearted,"
he comments.
But of course we know that that is part of their charm for Tom. At the
same time, we know that taking a licking is about the smallest price Tom
could possibly pay for any good thing he might desire. At the crucial
moment, just as Dobbins reaches Becky
in his relentless search for the
guilty one, Tom has another of his great inspirations. "He sprang to his
feet and shouted / done it!'
. . . and when he stepped forward to go
to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that shone
upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred
floggings."
Their reconciliation is complete. Indeed, it should be charac
terized, not as a reconciliation, but as a conquest. No knight slaying
dragon had ever won fair lady by what the lady had perceived as greater
valor.
So Tom and Becky
are inseparable upon the long-delayed picnic. In
the afternoon the children take to exploring McDougal's cave. There was
a main avenue that was familiar to most. No one, the
cave, for there were labyrinths beyond labyrinths, and it was not custom
ary
we are told "knew"
to venture beyond the main avenue and the corridors and recesses
immediately
adjacent thereto. "Tom Sawyer knew as much of the cave
one."
as any
Tom leads Becky on into the cave, beyond the known portion to the
unknown, until finally they are lost, with no idea, and finally no rational
hope, of emerging alive. Why? At a certain point, "the ambition to be a
discoverer seized him."
Tom is a venturer; his is the spirit of enterprise.
But Tom never seeks danger for its own sake; nor does he willingly face
danger except when, as in the courtroom, it is suppressed by another,