Rediscovering Childhood With ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’

Writer Mark Twain was speaking to adults when he wrote about Tom Sawyer’s childhood adventures.

Tom Sawyer swims in a river, in this illustration by True Williams from an 1876 edition of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." Public Domain

During childhood, adulthood seems impossibly distant, an eternity away. But once people reach adulthood and look back, they realize how quickly childhood fades—swifter than the fading of grass and leaves in the autumn. The long golden afternoons spent at play with few responsibilities and many opportunities, where the future is an unopened treasure box—all this glory of childhood disappears before they know it.

Yet, in memory and in literature, youth is preserved and can be rediscovered. The rediscovery of childhood can offer adults something as refreshing as a cool drink on a sweaty summer day. It offers a reminder of a simpler way of living, a life full of vitality and hope, and a sense of adventure.

Childhood exists apart from the workaday world. It can reawaken a part of the human soul—arguably its most important part—that is not tethered to the drudgery of work and the tyranny of productivity. The play of childhood is not done for the sake of something else; it’s done for its own sake. It prepares the way for important activities in adulthood that are also for their own sake: talking, singing, dancing, painting, reading, observing, contemplating, adventuring, and loving.

American Folklore Issue: "Tom Sawyer," 8-cent, 1972 U.S. stamp. Public Domain

The Nostalgia for Childhood

One classic book that seeks to remind its readers of childhood is Mark Twain’s 1876 novel, “The Adventure of Tom Sawyer.” Though often considered a children’s book, it offers a lot to adults. As Twain himself commented in the preface: “Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.”

In a letter from the summer of 1875, Twain was even more explicit; the book’s real, crypto-audience is adults: “It is not a boy’s book, at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written for adults.” Twain isn’t clear about what he hopes to inspire in adult readers, but he seems to have believed that the simple act of remembering childhood—what it feels like to be a child—is a worthwhile enterprise in itself.

Literary critic Nasrullah Mambrol’s interpretation of Twain’s remark is that “the essence of childhood can be savored only after the fact, only after one has passed through it and can look back upon it.” The novel’s heavy aura of nostalgia, as heavy as a humid summer’s day, evokes an atmosphere of reminiscence that only adults can really appreciate.

A Time to Remember

Few novels have done a better job encapsulating old-fashioned boyhood than “Tom Sawyer.” The episodic novel follows the stunts, antics, and adventures of a 12- or 13-year-old boy growing up in St. Petersburg, Missouri, along the banks and sandy beaches of old man Mississippi. It roams from skipping school to youthful infatuation to searching for buried treasure. Twain weaves together many variegated episodes into a single tapestry that depicts the childhood’s essence, including its mischief, its fears, its hopes, and its triumphs. The book is an icon of what it means—at least, what it once meant—to be an American boy. The novel’s simple, straightforward prose enhances this theme.

Few boys had as many adventures as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. First edition frontispiece, 1876, from "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public Domain

The episodes of the novel include the famous fence-washing scene. Tom manages to get his friends to take over a dull chore for him by appealing to their desire to get that which is denied them. He outwits both his peers and his adult superiors, like Aunt Polly, through his understanding of human nature. The subject matter of Twain’s narrative may be light and childlike, but the observations about human nature are penetrating and universal, applying as much to adults as children.

In another episode, Tom and his friends run away to be pirates, making a camp on an island in the Mississippi River. Their adventure causes the adult world to scramble in search of them and wring its hands over their apparent deaths. Here, the contrast between the carefree, if mischievous, existence of boyhood and the careworn, if more responsible, world of the adults is striking.

The fact that the boys are not prevented immediately from carrying out their plan and that they have the know-how to get to the island and set up camp speaks to the greater independence of past generations of boys.

Though the pirating experience ends fairly quickly and causes the adults consternation, it still glows with a charm and naturalness that’s all but unknown to many children today. Children have neither the opportunity nor the interest in running off to the woods. This episode provides an example of the kind of raw and direct contact with the world that was once normal. Such experiences instilled strength and competence in boys and a wealth of real-world experiences to draw from even in adulthood.

When the Bigger World Intrudes

Childhood has its dark days, too, of course, and Twain’s idyll doesn’t totally neglect them. It is a law of life that the adult world must break in on the child’s world from time to time. It does so more often as the child grows, until eventually the childhood world is left behind completely, as inaccessible as a desert island. The boys’ encounters with the graverobbers and Injun Joe serve this function in the novel; Twain begins to hint that the boyhood bliss cannot go on forever—innocence will gradually be lost. In this, there is perhaps a tragic undertone to the book. Growing up must happen; evil must be encountered. This is necessary, however painful. Yet we wish it didn’t have to happen for so many so soon.

An illustration from the 1876 edition "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." PD-US

Tom demonstrates some maturation over the course of the book, of course. By the end, he’s managed to combine his boyish high spirits, sense of adventure, vitality, and cleverness with a more adult sense of responsibility and courage: He does his best to care for a girl, Becky, when they get lost together in a network of caves. It’s this balance between boyish pluck and adult responsibility that helps him defeat Injun Joe, in fact.

At the same time, the ending of the novel can be read allegorically as the triumph of childhood over adulthood. Injun Joe is defeated and the treasure Tom has been pursuing is recovered. That is, Tom has fended off the adult world enough so that he can remain a boy for the time being. Despite some maturation, Tom remains thoroughly a boy at the end of the book. He returns to his fantasies in the woods and his pranks on classmates, putting off the evils and responsibilities of adult life.

But of course, this delay is temporary; it’s a brief halt in the onward march of time, and the boy’s victory over adulthood is a pyrrhic one. We cannot remain children forever. Tom’s days of boyish frolicking are numbered.

That’s a good thing, ultimately. Children ought to become adults, and a romanticized vision that idolizes childhood as inherently superior to adulthood would be an error. That’s not Twain’s point, here, in any case. Instead, Twain draws our attention to the value of our own childhoods for their sheer joy. At the same time, he is reminding us of the childlike qualities in each of us that can and should endure into adulthood.

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