Bijoy Babu
Language Arts
3/14/10
Tom Sawyer the Glorious Whitewasher.

“Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll whitewash some.” said Tom
So this starts the wonderful story, well, not exactly wonderful….but a miraculous story of one of the best known Englishmen of the 19th century in American Literature. His name was Tom Sawyer, an amazing character that was originally made by Mark Twain. In the story the glorious whitewasher, you find Tom having trouble whitewashing the fence and is lazy, but when he calls for help later. He gets himself into a nasty and terrible situation. Will Tom be a good boy and finish the fence by himself, or will he run off into trouble and make someone else do it for him, to escape into another prank of course.
To begin with, the beginning of the story you find Tom on a gorgeous Saturday morning where we see Tom getting ready for work. The whole story is really a mode of comedy if you look at it. To start of a comedy, you look at the first point, which is the normal everyday life of Tom. In the beginning, you see Tom inspecting and what appears to start whitewashing. The second point is the conflict arises, and it is the fault of the main character. The problem as you know is that he bribes people to help him whitewash the fence for some tiny valuables and toys. To do this, he makes them think its fun and they want to do it themselves. It’s Just like that, pretty easy for a boy like Tom. So after he gets into all this trouble, with his friends not knowing this, he realizes what he has done but not all of it. Remember that Tom is a pretty naughty boy and he doesn’t realize stuff that easily. Many boys came to whitewash the fence like Jim, the African American who works for Aunt Polly. The resolution occurs when Tom and the boys finally run out of whitewash. That is like when the whole story comes to a twist and it is all over. The only way that Tom was free was the whitewash, but somewhere in the middle of that, he meets his friend Ben, who thinks he’s a captain of a boat. Hey talk and have all this fun, while they are wasting time doing their work. At the end of the story Tom is back to his regular old self again. The whitewash is all gone and there is nothing else to do. It is the end of Tom’s freedom and his fun. Now he has to find another way to get some free time….
There are many characters in this story. As you know, Tom is the main character. Tom is just a young boy, probably in his teens. He is very naughty at times and wants to have free time forever. Wants to escape into a freedom world, where he can do anything he wants. The only thing that his friends and other people should look out for is that he is very clever and smart. He can probably get out of any bad situation, but doesn’t know what is right or wrong. Then we have Ben, who thinks he is a sailor of the famous ship, the Missouri. Now you might think he is pretty crazy but he is smart enough to go into Tom’s traps and is also smart well. He is about the same age as Tom and they make a pretty good match, but in other cases they are very different indeed. He knows a lot about ships and the sea. Another character is Jim, the African American who works for Aunt Polly. He works a lot in the fields and such but never gets time for free time. Unlike Tom, he likes to work and have a good life. Jim is a very hard working and good soul. He pretty smart, but one time in the beginning of the story, he almost fell for the whitewashing trick to Tom. Good thing he got out of it in time. The last character is Aunt Polly who is also a hard working person. Unlike Tom again, she likes working but is not the most interesting person and the nicest person you ever met.
There are not that many symbols in the story, but there are some main symbols like the whitewash, now the whitewash is the main symbol in this whole story. You have this little bucket of white liquid that Tom can control his friends in. At the end, so many kids came and whitewashed that the entire fence was finally whitewashed and clean. Another symbol in the story is Tom’s collectibles and tiny toys that he gets from his friends. This symbolizes the greed and the wealth of the pranks that Tom Sawyer holds in hands. He is very smart and is clever, but can bribe and control people fairly easy with his tricks. The next symbol you could say is the fence, before it is whitewashed of course. Before it was just an old, brown, long piece of wood. Now it is a whole new thing. The fence really represents the whitewash actually. The whitewash is the other half of the fence and they both make a complete new thought. The last symbol we have here is the Missouri, which is the boat that one of Tom’s friends, Ben is impersonating. The imaginary ship that Ben wanted to always ride in his life. The ship is symbolizing the friendship of the boat and Ben. He was a pretty good impersonator but he never had anything else on his mind so he was pretty, well, you could say dumb.
The last part is the conclusion. We have seen that throughout the story, Tom has been a pretty mean kid, without really telling the truth to his friends but he still got a lot of values. The only thing we now is that Tom has a bit realized that he did something bad, but naughty kids never admit it. Let’s just pray that he doesn’t get into any more trouble.