Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

As people grow up, it’s easy to forget what it was once like to be a young child. Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, has written the novel in hopes to remind adults what it was once like to be a child, in the preface specifically saying to “remind adults of what they once were themselves”. The book was written to remind adults of certain aspects that they experienced throughout their youthful years. While many people’s memories of being a child are different, they all carry the same themes of childhood. Twain presents childhood in his novel as adventurous and immature to readers, so they can once again remember what it was like to be a child.

Mark Twain first portrays childhood as adventurous in his novel. Throughout the

In many people’s lives, there have been many moments that one cannot be bothered to remember where people haven’t made the best choices, as part of being a child. Tom was no exception, one instance being when he was alone with Becky Thatcher in the schoolhouse. He had let his feelings get in the way of Becky’s when she became upset over the fact that Tom once liked Amy Lawrence. He “got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob” and hoped that she would take it as consolation (Twain 56). Of course that did nothing to help the young girl and in response to her, Tom “marched out of the house and over the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day”, leaving Becky alone (Twain 56). This was one of Tom’s many immature mistakes that he can only learn from in the future. Another example of immaturity in within the novel was when Tom decided to misuse medicine; and like many others, this was another point in his life where Tom can’t help but deem this moment as immature. As Aunt Polly fed him a medicine dubbed “Painkiller” because she thinks he’s sick - when he’s really just stuck thinking about Becky - Tom, instead of telling Aunt Polly to stop wasting her efforts, he does the most sensible thing to do as a young boy: he fed the medicine to the cat named Peter. Instead of telling his mother of what really ailed him, he “pried [Peter’s] mouth open and poured down the