Summary—Chapter 3: Busy at War and Love
Aunt Polly is pleasantly surprised to find the work done,
and she allows Tom to go out in the late afternoon. On his way,
he pelts Sid with clods of dirt in revenge for his treachery in
the matter of the shirt collar. He then hastens to the town square,
where a group of boys are fighting a mock battle. Tom and his friend
Joe Harper act as generals. Tom’s army wins the battle.
On his way home for dinner, Tom passes the Thatcher house
and catches sight of a beautiful girl. He falls head over heels
in love with her. Quickly forgetting his last love, a girl named
Amy Lawrence, Tom spends the rest of the afternoon “showing off”
on the street. The girl tosses him a flower, and, after some more
showing off, Tom reluctantly returns home.
At dinner, Sid breaks the sugar bowl, and Tom is blamed.
Tom’s mood changes, and he wanders out after dinner feeling mistreated and
melodramatic, imagining how sorry Aunt Polly would be if he turned
up dead. Eventually, he finds his way back to the beautiful girl’s
house and prepares to die pitifully beneath her window. Just then,
a maid opens the window and dumps a pitcher of water on his head.
Tom scurries home and goes to bed as Sid watches in silence.
Analysis—Chapters 1–3
The first word of the novel—Aunt Polly’s shout of “TOM!”—immediately
establishes Aunt Polly’s role as disciplinarian and Tom’s role as
troublemaker. Tom and Aunt Polly’s initial confrontation quickly
characterizes Tom as clever enough to escape punishment and Aunt
Polly as someone who threatens harsh discipline but who, for all
her bluster, is really quite fond of her nephew. “Every time I hit
him,” she says, “my old heart most breaks.” Aunt Polly knows that
she must discipline Tom in order to help him mature successfully
into responsible adulthood, but there is a part of her that balks
at impinging on the freedom of such a creative and headstrong child.
That the softhearted Aunt Polly is Tom’s only authority figure in the
home explains Tom’s relatively large degree of freedom. Huckleberry
Finn, the son of the town drunk, offers an even more extreme example
of a child who lives outside of the normal structures of authority,
whether parental, social, or legal.
By depicting the fighting, playing, and trading in which
the children engage as elaborate rituals, Twain emphasizes that
the world of childhood is governed by its own social rules, which
serve as a kind of practice for, and microcosm of, adulthood. The
reality of the surrounding adult social world manifests itself in
the brief appearance of the slave boy, Jim, abruptly reminding us
that the novel is set in the slaveholding South. Unlike Twain’s
later novel Huckleberry Finn, however, slavery
and criticism of slavery exist in Tom Sawyer only
in the background; Tom’s idyllic childhood adventures remain the
novel’s focus.
The scene in which Tom persuades his peers to do all
his whitewashing work establishes Tom’s position as a leader among
his peers and as an initiative-taking mastermind. Though a troublemaker,
Tom at times presents a hint of maturity that his comrades lack.
Joe Harper, Tom’s friend who acts as the opposing general in the
mock battle, serves as a sidekick throughout the novel, mostly following
Tom’s lead. Because of his comparatively dull nature and flat characterization,
Joe highlights Tom’s vibrancy. Sid, Tom’s half-brother, is presented
as Tom’s opposite—whereas Tom is a mischief-maker with a noble heart,
Sid is a well-behaved child whose heart is basically evil.
