Sawyer, Tom

Lies and acts of deception play a significant role in the narrative of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), written by Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens). This classic tale of American youth proved poplar enough to prompt Twain to pen several sequels: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896). The work has remained an enduring part of the American literary canon, and it continues to occupy a prominent place in America popular culture, having inspired film and comic book adaptations and theatrical plays.

The prominence of lying in Tom Sawyer is not surprising, given Twain's literary preoccupation with truth and falsehood, which can found in works ranging from “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865), a comic short story depicting a gambler's use of cheating and deception to win a bet, to Puddin'head Wilson (1894), in which a black child's mother switches her light-skinned son with a white child in the hope of improving his lot in life by having him pass for white.

Tom Sawyer‘s title character routinely tells lies small and large, with outcomes ranging from comical to serious. The novel's very first chapter has Tom lying to his guardian, Aunt Polly, denying that he stole jam and played hooky. Like these, many of Tom's lies are exculpatory [Page 831]attempts to avoid guilt and evade punishment. In one case, however, he does the reverse, chivalrously lying to protect his love interest, Becky Thatcher, from retribution for having damaged their teacher's prized anatomy book, claiming that he was the culprit and taking upon himself Becky's punishment.

The novel's second chapter features one of American literature's most iconic scenes, in which Tom displays sharp psychological insight in inducing his friends to pay him for the privilege of whitewashing a fence he was assigned to paint as a punishment. He deceives his friends into thinking the work is a rare privilege and not dull drudgery. Later, Tom leverages the loot gained from the whitewashing scam to trade for Sunday school tickets given to students for reciting Bible verses from memory; students who collect enough tickets are awarded their own Bible.

This leads to one of the novel's most comical scenes. Through shrewd trading Tom accumulates the number of tickets—representing 2,000 memorized verses—required to earn him his own Bible. During a special church event, which includes speeches and recitations by Sunday school students, Tom produces the tickets and claims his prize. When asked by a visiting dignitary to demonstrate his biblical knowledge by identifying the first two apostles appointed by Jesus, Tom delays and then, when pressed, reluctantly responds by naming David and Goliath.

Most of the lies Tom tells concern minor matters. There is one lie, however, that has life-and-death consequences. While visiting a cemetery at midnight as part of a superstitious cure for warts, Tom and his friend Huck Finn witness two local ruffians, Muff Potter and Injun Joe, robbing the grave of a recently deceased town resident under the direction of Dr. Robinson, who had paid the men in advance for the deed. Before carting the body away, Potter demands an extra $5. This request leads to heated words and a fistfight that ends with Injun Joe using his partner's knife, which he had retrieved after it had fallen to the ground during the struggle, to kill Dr. Robinson. Injun Joe places the knife in the hand of Potter, who had been knocked unconscious. When Potter comes to, he concludes based upon the planted evidence that he has killed the doctor, and his devious partner affirms that Potter is the murderer.

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