Theme: the theme of slavery in the novels of m. Twain contents

2.3.3. Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer is the same age as Huck and his best friend. Thanks to his imagination, he gives Huck access to complicated adventures found in Romantic novels. Tom has been raised in relative comfort, he believes in sticking strictly to social rules, most of which have more to do with style than morality or anyone‟s welfare. His behavior is the total opposite to that of Huck; Tom has a firm loyalty to rule while Huck has a tendency to question authority.
Tom represents the society of his time, the tricks he makes seem to be funny but in fact they show how much terrifying and unthinking society can be. Tom knows that Miss Watson is dead and the black slave Jim is free but he allows Jim to remain captive while he thinks of a fantastic escape plan and this shows us that Tom did not care about Jim and his freedom and he exemplifies to what extent society can shape a young man‟s behavior to become egotistical. Huck decides to help Jim and to free him from the Phelps‟s plantation. When he gets to the farm they think he is Tom, “Dear, dear, it does seem like I could eat you up! Children, it‟s your cousin Tom!—tell him howdy” (Twain 223). Huck knows that real Tom will come to the house so he went searching for him and when he finds him he asks him to steal the slave Jim out of the plantation. Huck is astonished because Tom agrees to help him: “Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard” (Twain 228). Then they both start making plans to save Jim after they examine the cabin where Jim is being held. Huck‟s logical plan is to steal the keys from uncle Silas and unlock Jim but Tom finds this plan too simple “it‟s mild as goose-milk” (Twain 235). Then they decide to dig Jim out of the cabin and this plan is complicated and it will take a couple of weeks. Tom is trying to make the escape like the prison novel he has read.
Twain focuses in his novel on the issue of slavery and makes it one of the essential subjects dealt with to show black suffering. Many Characters in the novel are slaveholders like Miss Watson, the Grangerfords and the Phelps family while other characters profit from slavery in an indirect way such as the Duke and the King who sell Miss Watson‟s slave Jim into the Phelpses plantation in exchange for a cash reward and even Tom who wants to have fun at the expense of Jim.