Tom Sawyer Little Rascal And Proper Southern Gentleman

Tom Sawyer: Little Rascal and Proper Southern Gentleman In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer appears in St Petersburg and at the Phelps’ farm as Huck Finn’s companion. Though Tom serves as Huck’s partner-in-crime of sorts, the two boys contrast in crucial perceptual and behavioral aspects: where Tom possesses a love for romanticism and a strict policy of adherence to societal conventions and codes, Huck possesses a skeptical sort of personality in which he tends to perceive society’s infatuations as frivolous. Tom’s presence represents an overlying trend in behavior for Mark Twain’s era wherein individuals adhere to an idealistic social code that justifies the subjugation of others for the entertainment of the privileged populus. In this regionalist critical novel, Mark Twain uses Tom Sawyer as a vehicle to reveal the dangers of an idealistic society and how idealism leads to society rationalizing its day-to-day standards; there by, its idealism serves to hide the questionable moral behaviors prevalent in Twain’s era. TOM’S WORLD In society, individuals follow a core set of ethical codes which justify certain behaviors and vilify others. Twain uses Tom’s play world as a parallel to the adult moral code of his era. Tom possesses an infatuation with adventure stories and the common traits that comprise each; his infatuation turns the principles of his books into a code of standards to which he staunchly adheres. He parallels the concept of Southern honor, the