Glittering Gold Part 2: Tom Sawyer as a Man of Gold

Mark Twain’s gold mining adventures in Nevada taught him a valuable lesson, “nothing that glitters is gold” and that it is human nature to “go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica” (Twain Travel 59).  This revelation stuck with Twain throughout his life and showed up in his writings.  In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain highlight young Tom Sawyer and his friends as “men of gold” (59). 

Twain exposes the idea that these young boys can be men of gold through the innocence of childhood and exploration of youth as a condition rather than a period of time.  In Twain’s story about Tom Sawyer there is a running theme that idealized childhood and the purity and innocence that exists in it. Twain depicts many instances where this is best seen.   Two that stand out as example of an idealized childhood are when Tom convinces the local boys to paint his fence and the superstitions that the boys cling to as a religion. 

Tom manages to convince his friends and the boys in town to help him paint his fence, pay him for the pleasure of doing it, and thoroughly enjoy the work.  Tom does this by exaggerating his work on the fence and painting it “with the eye of and artist” brushing “ daintily back and forth” and “criticizing the effects” as if it were a fine piece of art rather than a chore (Twain 16, 17).  This catches the eye of Ben, Tom’s first victim, and in return for being able to whitewash Tom’s fence Ben gives him his apple.  Boy after boy follow in Ben’s footsteps, paying Tom for the pleasure of painting the fence with whatever “treasure” they have available.  These treasures come in the form of fragments of chalk, a dog-collar, pieces of orange-peel, and so on.  The act of painting the fence and the treasures used to pay for the opportunity show the innocence of youth because they are themselves innocent and simple.  In childhood the simplest thing shave worth, and imagination allows the dullest of pastime become adventures in art.  Twain shows that gold comes in the form of boys, their simple activities, and the things they value. 

In the second example, Twain shows how superstitions have been perpetuated, and how the children come to create a religion around these superstitions.  Tom runs into Huckleberry Finn one morning, and Huck is carrying a dead cat.  The two boys strike up a conversation about the proper method for getting rid of warts.  In one superstition, a boy much stick his hand in stump water and recite an incantation; in another superstition, the boy must have a dead cat in a graveyard at midnight and throw it while reciting a different incantation.  Both rituals, though different, play a part in the religion the children have set up.  For them these rituals are as real, or more real, than the adult, Christian religion they are forced to endure.  There is an innocence and purity about these rituals because they have not grown out of forced attendance and recitations, but out of imagination and life.  The children clearly put more stock in this religion than they do Christianity.  They respect the home-grown “gold” and wisdom that exists in them. 

Through Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain attempts to point out the innocence of childhood and make his adult readers nostalgic for a time and place that would allow for the exploration of the world and human nature in a way that is unique to childhood.  He shows that “men of gold” are not always men and the perhaps the loss of childhood turns men from gold to mica.