[H] Sarah: Chapters 35-37

“Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life” (page 188). Stealing Jim is a game to Tom: just another one of his adventures without consequences; an adventure with European “heroes” as he says on page 180. “You got to invent all the difficulties. Well, we can’t help it, we got to do the best we can with the materials we’ve got. Anyhow, there’s one thing – there’s more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers…” (Page 180).

Huck intersects all of Tom’s fantasy with a strain of reality. “What do we want to saw?” Tom says “What do we want of it? Hain’t we got to saw the leg of Jim’s bed off, so as to get the chain loose?” Huck says “Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off.” (page 180). This shows some of the differences between Huck and Tom. The reality and sense in Huck’s thoughts Tom’s fantasies (that Huck follows along with because he doesn’t know what else to do and has no control over Tom).

Huck always has a notion of reality, consequence, and capture on his mind. This can be contrasted with Tom’s belief in fantasy and his incredible impunity and “honor” (pg. 180). This is all a game and a challenge to Tom while Huck needs to (and does) treat this as reality that has real consequences. If this doesn’t work or if they treat this as a joke, Jim’s life is in danger.

Tom, on page 181 said, “Huck, you don’t ever seem to want to do anything that’s regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time.” Huck then responded, “Well, I says, if it’s in the regulations, and he’s got to have it, all right, let him have it; because I don’t wish to go back to no regulations; but there’s one thing, Tom Sawyer – if we go tearing up our sheets to make Jim a rope-ladder, we’re going to get into trouble with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you’re born.” (Page 181-182).

Tom feels that he has to obey all the white man’s regulations and the middle class conventions. He’s very unoriginal in that he follows in other people’s footsteps and does what he reads in books. Huck needs to think things up on the spot and is, on the other hand, very original. He has no regulations because of his previous life with Pap, though he does display his knowledge of consequence specifically through the above quote from pages 181-182. He wants some of these regulations to fit in with Tom, but others so he doesn’t have to deal with the life he lived before he was with Jim. Tom uses his authority to determine the impress upon Huck the regulations he could place on people.

The regulations that Tom submits to always affect Huck and his following decisions. Huck sometimes tries to resist the regulations, but always surrenders and follows Tom’s command. Tom even says that Huck is not “regular” and uses this standpoint of a white, middle class, male authority to manipulate Huck and the things he does. Huck generally submits to what Tom says, but thinks about it and ways to get around it by saying what he thinks only to be shot down by Tom saying that he (Huck) is uneducated and is inferior to him in many different ways.

Tom uses his white, middle class authority to determine right and wrong in each and every situation in addition to the regulations as I said above. He says that it was wrong for Huck to take the watermelon and proceeds to scold him. The stealing versus borrowing aspect of these chapters is very important in my mind. Tom uses his regulations and his authority to determine what’s right and wrong: what’s okay to steal and what’s not. Huck, as he learned from Pap, is allowed to borrow when he feels like it and doesn’t necessarily need to give it back afterward. For example, in these chapters, Huck borrows the pick-ax, but Tom steals the case-knife. Huck steals the watermelon and Tom says it’s a bad thing to do! That’s not abiding by the rules. Tom says that stealing is okay as long as it’s part of the plan, but not if it’s not part of the plan. This is part of the reason why Tom says it’s wrong for Huck to take the slave’s watermelon but okay to steal a case-knife from their Aunt Sally and Uncle Sirus.

Huck says, “Picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, I don’t care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, for a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I ain’t ways particular how it’s done so it’s done.” (page 186). Tom responds, “Well,” he says, “there’s excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by it and see the rules broke – because right is right and wrong is wrong and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and he knows better. It might answer for you to dig Jim out with a pick, without any letting-on, because you don’t know no better; but it wouldn’t for me, because I do know better.”

Huck and Tom’s morality are VERY different. Tom has a flexible morality – the white morality but can still be adventurous. If he needs something, then it’s moral, but if he doesn’t need it, then it’s immoral which follows what he said before about stealing and whether or not it w as right or wrong, depending on the circumstances. Huck rejects Tom’s morality. He’s very concerned for Jim in these chapters and makes moral decisions based on humanity and helping Jim, for the most part, whereas Tom could care less about Jim, and instead wants adventure. Whatever will help him get that will suddenly be moral and within the regulations.

Tom has put himself at the top of the hierarchy in their current group of people; he’s in the position of superiority. Huck falls far below Tom in the hierarchy, and Nat is behind Huck. Nat and Jim are at the bottom of the totem pole in the scale of hierarchy. Nat resists white supervision and white superiority. Tom is one of the many white authority figures in Nat’s life. He resists this by letting go and not involving himself in the witch pie scandal at the end of chapter thirty-seven.

We talked, a week or so ago, about Jim’s silence in certain situations. Well, Jim is completely silenced in this group of chapters so Huck takes over and has the responsibility to the novel to report what Jim thinks, though that scarcely happens. Huck is only reporting what Jim thinks. There is a clear example of this on page 188, in the last line of the first paragraph where Huck says (for Jim), “Jim he couldn’t see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as Tom said.” I think, in a sense, that Jim’s silence has to do with the fact that he had been sold back into slavery and his severe unhappiness and willingness to speak of the subject. He feels that at this point he has no hope of getting out of slavery or seeing his family again. I don’t think that this time he’s trying to trick Huck to get something out of it; he’s genuinely upset and discouraged by this sequence of events, and rightly so! Jim’s silence is extremely important throughout the whole book and his is a prime example of it!