Back to the Best Books

by Marilyn Green Faulkner

  The bildungsroman, or coming of age novel, follows the progress of the boy to the man. Three great authors from widely different cultural perspectives open a window into the lives of boys as they come to grips with a world of racial hatred, religious intolerance and moral degeneracy. They emerge changed forever, into fine young men.

  Boys Gone Wild :

  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain

  Mark Twain remains as colorful a figure in our collective consciousness as any of the characters he created. In fact, the man we remember as Mark Twain was himself a character, carefully created and promoted by the brilliant Samuel Clemens. His first novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is remarkable in many respects, for here we see the world through the eyes of a boy, rather than the traditional rugged hero of the American novel. And what a boy he is! Tom Sawyer leaps off the page as a complete and complex personality, with all the infuriating cockiness and endearing insecurity of the pre-pubescent male.

  Synopsis

  Tom Sawyer, an orphan, lives with his Aunt Polly in a small town on the Missouri River in the mid-1800’s. He is full of mischief: he plays hooky from school, cheats to win prizes in Sunday School and generally misbehaves in any way he can devise. His best friend is Huck Finn, the ragged, homeless son of the town drunk, (with even worse morals) and together they get into one scrape after another. Eventually the two miscreants land in big trouble by accidentally straying onto the scene of a homicide and becoming the targets of Injun Joe, the grave-robbing murderer of Doctor Robinson.

  Tom and Huck run away to a local island, then make a dramatic appearance at their own funeral after they are declared dead. They suffer illness, start a band of pirates and Tom has quarrels with his first love, Becky Thatcher. When the wrong man goes on trial for the murder of Dr. Robinson, Tom and Huck (though sworn to secrecy about it) are consumed with guilt. Eventually, on a church picnic, Tom and Becky become lost in a cave, while Huck discovers a plot by Injun Joe to hurt a local widow. Huck foils the plot, Tom saves Becky, Injun Joe gets his just desserts and the boys find the treasure that Injun Joe had concealed in the cave. They all live happily ever after, except poor Huck, who is adopted by the grateful widow and has to wear real clothes and go to school!

  What Makes it Great?

  One of the secrets to Mark Twain’s enduring popularity is his remarkable voice. The first line of this book is the shortest first line in all of literature, and a pure stroke of genius. Here it is: “Tom!” With this one word Twain lets us know that our hero is no saint; he’s a boy who gets yelled at—a lot. Tom is always in trouble, always has a new angle, and is the kind of kid you don’t want your child to play with. You have to love him. Twain instantly establishes a warm relationship with the reader as he invites us to remember our own childhoods by stepping into Tom’s world. These days Tom would be evaluated by counselors and placed on medication for Attention Deficit Disorder, but in Twain’s day he was simply a mischievous, all-American boy, and Twain obviously revels in his naughtiness:

  “He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him.

  Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a Negro, and he was suffering to practice it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.” (4)

  In an era when novels featured sugar-sweet children and all-wise adults, Tom Sawyer emerges as a complex, charming, infuriating, fascinating character in the process of transformation.

  Did You Know?

  Mark Twain wrote this book in response to a type of literature that he despised: the book with a “moral message.” These stories include “The Story of a Bad Little Boy Who Lived a Charmed Life” (1865) and “The Story of a Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper” (1870) in which “bad boys” get into mischief and suffer the consequences. By creating Tom, the all-American bad boy with a good heart, Twain turned these moralistic stories on their heads.

  Notice how in just a few lines (during the time when the “lost boys” are hiding out on the island) Twain shows us all the warring factions in the heart of a growing boy: the love of indolence, competitive games, and a primitive superstition, combined with a still-latent obsession with a girl, which he considers a shameful weakness:

  “Next they got their marbles and played “knucks” and “ring-taw” and “keeps” till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the “dumps,” and fell to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing “BECKY” in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. He erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving the other boys together and joining them.” (255)

  Stepping into Manhood

  Like most great children’s books this is a novel full of adult subject matter, replete with the themes of death, religious dogma in opposition to simple goodness, and the natural honor that exists in man before civilization corrupts him. Twain is so familiar and quotable that it is easy to laugh at the humor and miss the bitter subtext of the novel, which offers a harsh criticism of the way “society” fails its young. Tom is carefully taught to adopt the religious hypocrisy and racial hatred rampant in his culture, and his resistance to these teachings causes most of his trouble. He vacillates between half-hearted attempts to accept societal norms and an instinctive rejection of all authority. When Tom and Becky become hopelessly lost in the cave however, Tom begins to grow up. His mischievousness has brought his beloved into real danger; and now there are no adults around against whom to rebel. For the first time, our hero begins to show real courage rather than mere bravado:

  “At last Becky’s frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like sarcasms. Fatigue bore so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to sleep. Tom was grateful. He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and by-and-by a smile dawned and rested there. The peaceful face reflected somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. While he was deep in his musings, Becky woke up with a breezy little laugh—but it was stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it.

  “Oh, how COULD I sleep! I wish I never, never had waked! No! No, I don’t, Tom! Don’t look so! I won’t say it again.”

  “I’m glad you’ve slept, Becky; you’ll feel rested, now, and we’ll find the way out.”

  “We can try, Tom; but I’ve seen such a beautiful country in my dre
am. I reckon we are going there.”

  “Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let’s go on trying.” (367)

  This willingness to “go on trying,” in the face of overwhelming odds, sums up Tom’s greatness, and epitomizes the pioneering spirit that conquered the frontier. It is another mark of Twain’s brilliance; in the face of prejudice, hatred and heartless cruelty, he persists in a childlike faith in the essential goodness of the human spirit. This relentless optimism is one more reason why Mark Twain holds an enduring place in the hearts of readers everywhere.

  Quotations taken from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Penguin Classics Edition, New York. 1986

  Talk About It

  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would be labeled juvenile delinquents in our day. Have we lost something in the attempt to eradicate bad behavior in boys, or are we better off today with the advances in child psychology?

  About the Author: Mark Twain

  Samuel Clemens was born in 1835, the son of a genteel but unsuccessful father who died of pneumonia when he was eleven. Clemens was the sixth of seven children, only three of which survived childhood. He was raised on the banks of the Missouri River in a tiny town called Hannibal, later to be immortalized as the fictional town of St. Petersburg in his writing. At the time, Missouri was a slave state, a theme to be explored so well in his work.

  He was always writing, and had his first story published while still a teenager. His early years were spent as a printer, a journalist, and as a steamboat pilot. His first great success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, was published. He adopted the name Mark Twain and followed the example of Artemus Ward, a famous humorist of the time, giving lectures on his experiences in the West.

  During his family’s seventeen years in Hartford, Connecticut, Twain wrote some of his best-known works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is known as The Great American Novel. William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature.”

  During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. He died in 1910 and was buried in his wife’s family plot in New York. A 12-foot (i.e., two fathoms, or “mark twain”) monument marks his grave.

  Sources:

  James M. Cox. Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor. Princeton University Press, 1966.

  Everett Emerson. Mark Twain: A Literary Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

  Mapping the Human Heart:

  The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

  “Long ago, in The Chosen,” Chaim Potok writes, “I set out to draw a map of the New York world through which I once journeyed. It was to be a map not only of broken streets, menacing alleys, concrete-surfaced backyards, neighborhood schools and stores . . . a map not only of the physical elements of my early life, but of the spiritual ones as well.” (Chaim Potok, “The Invisible Map of Meaning: A Writer’s Confrontation,” Triquarterly, Spring 1992) With his glimpse into the lives of the Hasidic Jews of New York, Chaim Potok transports us to a world completely strange, yet strangely familiar.

  Synopsis

  The Chosen is the story of two young men growing up in Brooklyn just before the onset of World War II. Through a chance encounter between their baseball teams they form a friendship that changes both their lives. Reuven Malter, an orthodox Jew, and the son of a passionate Zionist and dedicated scholar, acts as narrator. Danny Saunders, a Hasidic Jew, is a brilliant boy with a photographic memory who is the son and heir of a Tzaddik, the leader of a Hasidic sect. He is being raised by his father under a code of silence, meaning, that with the exception of Talmudic discussions, Reb Saunders never speaks to his son directly. This seemingly cruel treatment is designed to “teach him the suffering of the world” and prepare Danny to assume his father’s place as the head of the congregation. Though the two boys see each other as complete cultural strangers, to the outside world they are simply both Jews.

  As these boys become acquainted we come to understand, with Reuven, something about Hasidism, the ultra-conservative sect that originated in Poland in response to the persecutions suffered by Jews hundreds of years ago. A Tzaddik, a mystical leader who is rabbi, prophet and even a Messianic figure to his followers, leads each group of Hasidic Jews. They dwell in a world closed even to other Jews, and as Reuven enters this world through his friendship with Danny, we have the rare opportunity to experience a fascinating culture within a culture. Danny resists the future that is mapped out for him: he is unwilling to follow in his father’s footsteps and longs to study psychology. We follow the boys through their high school and college years, as they come to terms with their fathers, their faith and their futures.

  What Makes it Great?

  Potok’s great strength is not in description or plot; it is in character. The greatness of this novel, and its enduring appeal, lies in the quirky characters of the two boys and two fathers at its center. Both Danny and Reuven are irresistible in their sincerity, idealism and intelligence. It’s not easy being Jewish in any age, and Potok gives us an inside look at the myriad challenges that they face. These boys and their fathers entrance us; we cannot look away. Here, for example, is the moment when Reb Saunders explains to Reuven (and by extension to Danny) why he imposed the code of silence that has caused Danny so much pain and sorrow:

  “My father himself never talked to me, except when we studied together. He taught me with silence. He taught me to look into myself, to find my own strength, to walk around inside myself in company with my soul . . . . One learns of the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain, he would say, by turning inside oneself, by finding one’s own soul. And it is important to know of pain, he said. It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, and our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe . . . .

  “Reuven, I did not want my Daniel to become like my brother, may he rest in peace. Better I should have had no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul . . . . And I had to make certain his soul would be the soul of a tzaddik no matter what he did with his life.” (278, 279)

  Did You Know?

  When Potok was 14, he read Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, and the experience altered him forever. He explained in a Newsday interview, “I found myself inside a world the merest existence of which I had known nothing about, I lived more deeply inside the world in that book than I lived inside my own world, for the time it took me to read it.” This sensation of being transported to a parallel reality captivated Potok, and he struck out to learn how to achieve the same effect with his own words.

  A Man of the World

  Chaim Potok says that he wrote The Chosen in order to come to terms with his own Jewish upbringing, particularly the fundamentalist viewpoint that taught him to see the Jewish race at the center of world history. Raised in an unquestioning orthodox home, Chaim graduated from his local Yeshiva and was ordained a rabbi. It was at this point that his life changed completely, when he was sent to Korea for two years as a chaplain. Of this experience he says, “When I went to Korea I was a very coherent human being in the sense that I had a model of what I was—I had a map. I knew who I was as a Jew. When I went to Asia, it all came unglued. It all became relativized. Everything turned upside down.” (Chaim Potok, personal interview) He came to believe that religious dogma is meaningless unless it leads us to deal more compassionately with others. He said: “A theology that is not linked directly to a pattern of behavior is a blowing of wind and macabre game with words. And a pattern of behavior that is not linked to a system of thought is an instance of religious robbery.” (ibid.)

  Chaim Potok’s father had taught him that Jews suffered because they were God’s chosen, yet over a million Koreans h
ad been senselessly slaughtered during the war. He wondered, were they also chosen in some way, or was all the suffering of the Jews meaningless? Potok had been taught to believe that paganism was evil, yet in the faces of devout Buddhists in prayer he recognized the same intensity that he knew in the faces of the faithful Jews in his synagogue. How could God hate these sincere, devout people?

  Through his experience in Korea Potok came to believe that by helping readers see into another culture, he could help them get a new perspective on their own. One of his early inspirations was James Joyce, who wrote only about his hometown of Dublin. Joyce said, “If I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities in the world. In the particular is contained the universal.” As we get into the heart of a lonely Hasidic boy we learn some universal truths about the human struggle, and find curious parallels between his world and our own.

  Reuven’s father tells him, “Human beings do not live forever, Rueven, we live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So we may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, that the blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. The span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so that its quality is immeasurable, though its quantity may be insignificant. A man must fill his life with meaning; meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest, when I am no longer here . . .” (147)