The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Becky Thatcher is Tom’s love interest. She is the blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter of Judge Thatcher, an influential man. Becky serves as both an ally and a foil to Tom. She is a symbol of the naivete of children. When Tom tells her that he loves her and proposes marriage, she accepts without really knowing what she is agreeing to. Telling herself that she is above Tom and his antics, Becky proves to be similarly jealous when he turns his attention back to Amy. She is guilty of the same sort of showing off as Tom, though in slightly different ways. Becky also gives Tom a reason to keep exploring the cave for an exit. He might not have kept trying if it were not for his sense of guilt over losing the path while with her.

Huckleberry Finn represents Freedom. He is unfettered by societal conventions, including sleeping indoors, sobriety, the idea that children shouldn’t smoke or use profanity, going to school, and more. He is “cordially hated by all the mothers of the town, because he [i]s idle and lawless and vulgar and bad—and because the children all [admire] him so, and [delight] in his forbidden society and [wish] to be like him” (50). However, despite his influence, the mothers who hate him do so “cordially.” Some of Huck’s reputation comes from his status as the “son of the town drunkard” (49). Pap, Huck’s father, plays a major role in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the follow-up to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

No one actually treats Huck as if he is inferior, or undeserving of love, when compared to the other characters. In fact, Huck is so endearing, and so likable, that it’s hard not to be on his side. He asks only that he be left alone and doesn’t seek to corrupt others.

This makes his final scene with Tom more poignant. When Huck protests that he doesn’t care how most people do things, because he isn’t most people, Tom wears him down with promises of the robber gang. Huck allows himself to be convinced that respectability—and its requisite sacrifice of certain freedoms—is worth pursuing.

Despite his vices, Huck is a symbol of childhood freedom. Even though this is a coming-of-age story, he resists the transition more than Tom. In fact, Huck dreads it. Unlike characters in many coming-of-age stories, Huck doesn’t enjoy it when someone—the Widow Douglas, in his case—takes charge of him. Being adopted and having a stable domestic life is not his goal or his reward. Pap has never been a parent, but Huck prefers Pap’s absentee fatherhood and the freedom it allows him to the widow’s well-intentioned attempts at civilizing him.

Injun Joe is the novel’s antagonist. He is an evil man without redeemable qualities. He is sadistic, cruel, and harbors long-standing grudges against many people in St. Petersburg. When Injun Joe talks about Widow Douglas’s husband, he says, “He was rough on me—and mainly he was the justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain’t all! It ain’t a millionth part of it! He had me horsewhipped!—horsewhipped in front of the jail!” (221).

Most of Injun Joe’s complaints arise from his view that he has been treated as an animal—as less than human. He has no reservations about murder, but his greatest cruelties are reserved for his vengeful plan for the Widow Douglas, whom he also compares to an animal: “When you want to get revenge on a woman you don’t kill her—bosh! You go for her looks. You slit her nostrils—you notch her ears like a sow!” (222).

At the time of the novel’s writing, it was acceptable for Twain to use Injun Joe as a symbol of evil simply due to his Indigenous heritage. Boys who played games of cowboys bringing justice and order to the land were used to ignorantly casting Indigenous Americans as the villains. In modern times, Twain’s portrayal of Joe is considered insensitive and archaic. It’s hard to imagine a character in a modern novel being accepted as evil simply because of their ethnicity.