Tom Sawyer Adventurous

A character in a novel has a way of helping to move the plot forward. They provide whatever the plot needs whether it be comedic relief, drama, anger, or a push of action to get the plot moving forward. The novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain is set in the American South in the 1850s. In the novel, Huck Finn fakes his death and runs away with Jim, a runaway slave. They encounter many obstacles while both on the river and on land. By the end of the novel, Huck and Jim learn many things and grow closer to each other. Tom Sawyer is Huck’s best friend who influences what Huck does frequently throughout the novel. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer is portrayed as selfish, adventurous, and dramatic.
While Huck and Jim are on the river, they come across a sinking ship. Huck wants to go on the ship and steal from it, but Jim does not want to go near the ship because it is sinking. Huck says to Jim, “Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure – that’s what he’d call it, and he’d land on that wreck if it was his last act” (Twain 67). Huck shows Tom is thrill-seeking by telling Jim this. Huck knows Tom would do anything for a good adventure. Tom would never pass up the opportunity to explore something and would always make the most of the escapade no matter how dangerous. Later in the novel, as Tom selfishly tries to help Huck save Jim, he comes up with many elaborate plans. Huck knows Tom’s plans are impractical, but Tom will not listen to him. When asked why he went through all the trouble to set Jim free when he already was, he replied with, “Well, that is a question, I must say; and just like women! Why I wanted the adventure of it; and I’d ‘a’ waded neck-deep in blood to” (Twain 289). Instead of telling everyone Jim is free like a practical person would, he leads Huck and Jim to believe the idea of breaking Jim out is extremely necessary. All he wants to do is go on adventures without a care in the world. Instead of thinking about others, he thinks about all the fun, adventurous things he could do as an alternative. Mark
Tom starts a gang with the other boys around his age. In the beginning, Huck goes along with the game, but does not see the point of it. To the gang, Tom says, “Now we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody who wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood” (Twain 7). Tom wants everything to be about him. He proclaims himself the leader of the gang and names it after himself. He thinks the whole world revolves around him; essentially, he is a huge drama-queen. As the gang is being formed, Tom tells the boys the rules. Most of the gang’s rules are from books Tom has read. Tom says to the gang, “if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person… mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breast, which was the sign of the band” (Twain 7). As a result of all the reading he does, Tom wants immeasurable amounts of drama and action in his everyday life. He wants the rules to scare the boys into staying a part of his adventure. There is no other significance of cutting a cross into someone’s chest as a sign of the gang aside from the drama and fear it ignites. Mark Twain writes Tom Sawyer as significantly dramatic in his