Maturity In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

Author John Macnaughton once said, “Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.” These words tend to seem simple or obvious, but genuinely reveal the truth of growing up mentally and physically. As children blossom into adults, they learn a lot about the people surrounding them and gain the knowledge of learning to trust others. Trust is a crucial factor in maturity, considering the more you trust someone the more you want to protect them. Tom Sawyer slowly learns to care about the others around him, and as the bond deepens, he begins to respect them. One of the countless themes that Mark Twain explores in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is maturity building trust. Three examples that

Aunt Polly doesn’t believe Tom when he said that he came back from the island and kissed her to show that he cared for her. He tells her that he had written a note on a piece of bark and was going to leave it, but in the end, decided not to. Aunt Polly then finds the bark in Tom’s, and pieces together that Tom was telling the truth all along. Twain shows this when he writes “So she sought the jacket pocket. 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!’” (Twain 119) This passage expresses how Aunt Polly feels when she realized that Tom was telling the truth and not telling another lie to her. His maturity was displayed and Aunt Polly felt as if she could trust him more since he was finally growing up. The event happened to be a stroke of serendipity for Aunt Polly. Mark Twain is representing the time in a child’s life when they start to grow up and learn more about themselves and others. Tom starts to deliberate how other people feel and keep in mind that not everything is about himself. Children tend to become less self-indulgent, and a product of that is building trust with the people around you. In real life, kids grow up everyday and make it evident that they are slowly learning how to mentally develop. Tom Sawyer reminds every one of the beauty of maturing and becoming appreciative of the others around