THE RED SCARLET

The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town
prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter A on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that
Hester is being punished for adultery. Hesters husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived
in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has
given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lovers identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her
punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again
refuses to identify her childs father.
The elderly onlooker is Hesters missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth. He
settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass.
Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they live in a
small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur
Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be
wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the
ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects
that there may be a connection between the ministers torments and Hesters secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can
learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark on the mans breast which convinces him that his
suspicions are correct.
Dimmesdales psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hesters charitable
deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she
and her mother are returning home from a visit to a deathbed when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish
himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearls request that he acknowledge her
publicly the next day, and a meteor marks a dull red A in the night sky. Hester can see that the ministers condition is worsening, and she
resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdales self-torment. Chillingworth refuses.
Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that Chillingworth has probably guessed that
she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They
will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair.
Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a
holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan
and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the
town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared
into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.
Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened
to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her charitable work.
She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own. When Hester dies,
she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet A.

Hester Prynne
Although The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne, the book is not so much a consideration of her innate character as it is an examination
of the forces that shape her and the transformations those forces effect. We know very little about Hester prior to her affair with
Dimmesdale and her resultant public shaming.
But it is what happens after Hesters affair that makes her into the woman with whom the reader is familiar. Shamed and alienated from the
rest of the community, Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on human nature, social organization, and larger moral questions.
Although the narrator pretends to disapprove of Hesters independent philosophizing, his tone indicates that he secretly admires her
independence and her ideas.
Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a result of her experiences. Hester is also maternal with respect to
society: she cares for the poor and brings them food and clothing. The shame attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Throughout The
Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman.
Roger Chillingworth
As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in human warmth. His twisted, stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his
distorted soul. From what the reader is told of his early years with Hester, he was a difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the
time, yet expected her to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend to spend time with her. Chillingworths decision to assume
the identity of a leech, or doctor, is fitting. Unable to engage in equitable relationships with those around him, he feeds on the vitality of

others as a way of energizing his own projects. Chillingworths death is a result of the nature of his character. After Dimmesdale dies,
Chillingworth no longer has a victim. Having lost the objects of his revenge, the leech has no choice but to die.
Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the deliberate destruction of others
rather than a redress of wrongs. His desire to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdales sin, which had love, not hate, as
its intent. Any harm that may have come from the young lovers deed was unanticipated and inadvertent, whereas Chillingworth reaps
deliberate harm.
Arthur Dimmesdale
Arthur Dimmesdale, like Hester Prynne, is an individual whose identity owes more to external circumstances than to his innate nature. The
reader is told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown at Oxford University. Dimmesdale has an unusually active conscience. The
fact that Hester takes all of the blame for their shared sin goads his conscience, and his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness
open up his mind and allow him to empathize with others. Consequently, he becomes an eloquent and emotionally powerful speaker and a
compassionate leader, and his congregation is able to receive meaningful spiritual guidance from him.
Ironically, the townspeople do not believe Dimmesdales protestations of sinfulness. Given his background and his penchant for rhetorical
speech, Dimmesdales congregation generally interprets his sermons allegorically rather than as expressions of any personal guilt. This
drives Dimmesdale to further internalize his guilt and self-punishment and leads to still more deterioration in his physical and spiritual
condition. The towns idolization of him reaches new heights after his Election Day sermon, which is his last. In his death, Dimmesdale
becomes even more of an icon than he was in life. Many believe his confession was a symbolic act, while others believe Dimmesdales fate
was an example of divine judgment.
Pearl
Hesters daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a symbol. She is quite young during most of the events of this novelwhen Dimmesdale
dies she is only seven years oldand her real importance lies in her ability to provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them
pointed questions and draws their attention, and the readers, to the denied or overlooked truths of the adult world.
Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mothers scarlet letter and of the society that produced it. From an early age, she fixates on the
emblem. Pearls innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the letter raise crucial questions about its meaning. Similarly, she inquires
about the relationships between those around hermost important, the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdaleand offers
perceptive critiques of them. Pearl provides the texts harshest, and most penetrating, judgment of Dimmesdales failure to admit to his
adultery. Once her fathers identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity; at Dimmesdales death she becomes
fully human, leaving behind her otherworldliness and her preternatural vision.
Governor Bellingham is a wealthy, elderly gentleman who spends much of his time consulting with the other town fathers. Despite his
role as governor of a fledgling American society, he very much resembles a traditional English aristocrat. Bellingham tends to strictly
adhere to the rules, but he is easily swayed by Dimmesdales eloquence. He remains blind to the misbehaviors taking place in his own
house: his sister, Mistress Hibbins, is a witch.
Mistress Hibbins - is a widow who lives with her brother, Governor Bellingham, in a luxurious mansion. She is commonly known to be a
witch who ventures into the forest at night to ride with the Black Man. Her appearances at public occasions remind the reader of the
hypocrisy and hidden evil in Puritan society.
Reverend Mr. John Wilson - Bostons elder clergyman, Reverend Wilson is scholarly yet grandfatherly. He is a stereotypical Puritan
father, a literary version of the stiff, starkly painted portraits of American patriarchs. Like Governor Bellingham, Wilson follows the
communitys rules strictly but can be swayed by Dimmesdales eloquence. Unlike Dimmesdale, his junior colleague, Wilson preaches
hellfire and damnation and advocates harsh punishment of sinners.
Narrator - The unnamed narrator works as the surveyor of the Salem Custom-House some two hundred years after the novels events
take place. He discovers an old manuscript in the buildings attic that tells the story of Hester Prynne; when he loses his job, he decides to
write a fictional treatment of the narrative. The narrator is a rather high-strung man, whose Puritan ancestry makes him feel guilty about his
writing career. He writes because he is interested in American history and because he believes that America needs to better understand its
religious and moral heritage.
THEMES
Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition
The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and
suffering. But it also results in knowledgespecifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate
their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on
seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be
punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hesters sin is to ostracize her. Yet, Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdales
experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy, and understanding of others. Paradoxically, these
qualities are shown to be incompatible with a state of purity.
The Nature of Evil
The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the Black Man, the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the
Black Man is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devils child.
This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true evil
arises from the close relationship between hate and love. Evil is not found in Hester and Dimmesdales lovemaking, nor even in the cruel
ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of
Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the Black Man,
because her father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale, who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel
denial of love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.
Identity and Society
After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may
seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter
and resume a normal life. Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering letting
her remove the letter. Hesters behavior is premised on her desire to determine her own identity rather than to allow others to determine it
for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of societys power over her: she would be admitting that

the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she desires to escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a
symbol of her own experiences and character. Her past sin is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a
part of herself. Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life.
Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the communitys minister, he is more symbol than human being.
Except for Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully ignore his obvious anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately,
Dimmesdale never fully recognizes the truth of what Hester has learned: that individuality and strength are gained by quiet self-assertion
and by a reconfiguration, not a rejection, of ones assigned identity.
MOTIFS
Civilization versus the Wilderness
In The Scarlet Letter, the town and the surrounding forest represent opposing behavioral systems. The town represents civilization, a rulebound space where everything one does is on display and where transgressions are quickly punished. The forest, on the other hand, is a
space of natural rather than human authority. In the forest, societys rules do not apply, and alternate identities can be assumed. While this
allows for misbehavior Mistress Hibbinss midnight rides, for exampleit also permits greater honesty and an escape from the
repression of Boston. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, for a few moments, they become happy young lovers once again.
Hesters cottage, which, significantly, is located on the outskirts of town and at the edge of the forest, embodies both orders. It is her place
of exile, which ties it to the authoritarian town, but because it lies apart from the settlement, it is a place where she can create for herself a
life of relative peace.
Night versus Day
By emphasizing the alternation between sunlight and darkness, the novel organizes the plots events into two categories: those which are
socially acceptable, and those which must take place covertly. Daylight exposes an individuals activities and makes him or her vulnerable
to punishment. Night, on the other hand, conceals and enables activities that would not be possible or tolerated during the dayfor
instance, Dimmesdales encounter with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold. These notions of visibility versus concealment are linked to two of
the books larger themesthe themes of inner versus socially assigned identity and of outer appearances versus internal states. Night is
the time when inner natures can manifest themselves. During the day, interiority is once again hidden from public view, and secrets remain
secrets.
Evocative Names
The names in this novel often seem to beg to be interpreted allegorically. Chillingworth is cold and inhuman and thus brings a chill to
Hesters and Dimmesdales lives. Prynne rhymes with sin, while Dimmesdale suggests dimnessweakness, indeterminacy, lack of
insight, and lack of will, all of which characterize the young minister. The name Pearl evokes a biblical allegorical devicethe pearl of
great price that is salvation. This system of naming lends a profundity to the story, linking it to other allegorical works of literature such as
The Pilgrims Progress and to portions of the Bible. It also aligns the novel with popular forms of narrative such as fairy tales.
SYMBOLS
The Scarlet Letter
The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letters meaning
shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulterer, the A eventually comes to stand for Able. Finally, it becomes
indeterminate: the Native Americans who come to watch the Election Day pageant think it marks her as a person of importance and status.
Like Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of Hesters affair with Dimmesdale. But, compared with a human child, the letter
seems insignificant, and thus helps to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of the communitys system of judgment and punishment. The
child has been sent from God, or at least from nature, but the letter is merely a human contrivance. Additionally, the instability of the letters
apparent meaning calls into question societys ability to use symbols for ideological reinforcement. More often than not, a symbol becomes
a focal point for critical analysis and debate.
The Meteor
As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in Chapter 12, a meteor traces out an A in the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the
meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community,
which thinks that it stands for Angel and marks Governor Winthrops entry into heaven. But Angel is an awkward reading of the symbol.
The Puritans commonly looked to symbols to confirm divine sentiments. In this narrative, however, symbols are taken to mean what the
beholder wants them to mean. The incident with the meteor obviously highlights and exemplifies two different uses of symbols: Puritan and
literary.
Pearl
Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol. Pearl is a sort of living version of her mothers
scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual sin and the indicator of a transgression. Yet, even as a reminder of Hesters sin,
Pearl is more than a mere punishment to her mother: she is also a blessing. She represents not only sin but also the vital spirit and
passion that engendered that sin. Thus, Pearls existence gives her mother reason to live, bolstering her spirits when she is tempted to give
up. It is only after Dimmesdale is revealed to be Pearls father that Pearl can become fully human. Until then, she functions in a symbolic
capacity as the reminder of an unsolved mystery.
MOBY DICK
Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He has made several voyages as a sailor but none as
a whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he stays in a whalers inn. Since the inn is rather full, he has to share a bed
with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg. At first repulsed by Queequegs strange habits and shocking appearance
(Queequeg is covered with tattoos), Ishmael eventually comes to appreciate the mans generosity and kind spirit, and the two decide to
seek work on a whaling vessel together. They take a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There they secure
berths on the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth of sperm whales. Peleg and Bildad, the Pequods Quaker
owners, drive a hard bargain in terms of salary. They also mention the ships mysterious captain, Ahab, who is still recovering from losing
his leg in an encounter with a sperm whale on his last voyage.

The Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day with a crew made up of men from many different countries and races.
Soon the ship is in warmer waters, and Ahab makes his first appearance on deck, balancing gingerly on his false leg, which is made from a
sperm whales jaw. He announces his desire to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the legendary great white whale who took his leg, because he
sees this whale as the embodiment of evil. Ahab nails a gold doubloon to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to
sight the whale. As the Pequod sails toward the southern tip of Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted. During the hunt, a
group of men, none of whom anyone on the ships crew has seen before on the voyage, emerges from the hold. The mens leader is an
exotic-looking man named Fedallah. These men constitute Ahabs private harpoon crew, smuggled aboard in defiance of Bildad and Peleg.
Ahab hopes that their skills and Fedallahs prophetic abilities will help him in his hunt for Moby Dick.
The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian Ocean. A few whales are successfully caught and processed for their oil. From
time to time, the ship encounters other whaling vessels. Ahab always demands information about Moby Dick from their captains. One of the
ships, the Jeroboam, carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom for anyone who threatens Moby Dick. His predictions seem to
carry some weight, as those aboard his ship who have hunted the whale have met disaster. While trying to drain the oil from the head of a
captured sperm whale, Tashtego, one of the Pequods harpooners, falls into the whales voluminous head, which then rips free of the ship
and begins to sink. Queequeg saves Tashtego by diving into the ocean and cutting into the slowly sinking head.
During another whale hunt, Pip, the Pequods black cabin boy, jumps from a whaleboat and is left behind in the middle of the
ocean. He goes insane as the result of the experience and becomes a crazy but prophetic jester for the ship. Soon after, the Pequod meets
the Samuel Enderby, a whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick. The two captains
discuss the whale; Boomer, happy simply to have survived his encounter, cannot understand Ahabs lust for vengeance. Not long after,
Queequeg falls ill and has the ships carpenter make him a coffin in anticipation of his death. He recovers, however, and the coffin
eventually becomes the Pequods replacement life buoy.
Ahab orders a harpoon forged in the expectation that he will soon encounter Moby Dick. He baptizes the harpoon with the blood
of the Pequods three harpooners. The Pequod kills several more whales. Issuing a prophecy about Ahabs death, Fedallah declares that
Ahab will first see two hearses, the second of which will be made only from American wood, and that he will be killed by hemp rope. Ahab
interprets these words to mean that he will not die at sea, where there are no hearses and no hangings. A typhoon hits the Pequod,
illuminating it with electrical fire. Ahab takes this occurrence as a sign of imminent confrontation and success, but Starbuck, the ships first
mate, takes it as a bad omen and considers killing Ahab to end the mad quest. After the storm ends, one of the sailors falls from the ships
masthead and drownsa grim foreshadowing of what lies ahead.
Ahabs fervent desire to find and destroy Moby Dick continues to intensify, and the mad Pip is now his constant companion. The
Pequod approaches the equator, where Ahab expects to find the great whale. The ship encounters two more whaling ships, the Rachel and
the Delight, both of which have recently had fatal encounters with the whale. Ahab finally sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are
launched, and Moby Dick attacks Ahabs harpoon boat, destroying it. The next day, Moby Dick is sighted again, and the boats are lowered
once more. The whale is harpooned, but Moby Dick again attacks Ahabs boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard
to his death. Starbuck must maneuver the Pequod between Ahab and the angry whale.
On the third day, the boats are once again sent after Moby Dick, who once again attacks them. The men can see Fedallahs
corpse lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. Moby Dick rams the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is then caught in a harpoon line and hurled
out of his harpoon boat to his death. All of the remaining whaleboats and men are caught in the vortex created by the sinking Pequod and
pulled under to their deaths. Ishmael, who was thrown from a boat at the beginning of the chase, was far enough away to escape the
whirlpool, and he alone survives. He floats atop Queequegs coffin, which popped back up from the wreck, until he is picked up by the
Rachel, which is still searching for the crewmen lost in her earlier encounter with Moby Dick.
Ishmael
Despite his centrality to the story, Ishmael doesnt reveal much about himself to the reader. We know that he has gone to sea out
of some deep spiritual malaise and that shipping aboard a whaler is his version of committing suicidehe believes that men aboard a
whaling ship are lost to the world. It is apparent from Ishmaels frequent digressions on a wide range of subjectsfrom art, geology, and
anatomy to legal codes and literaturethat he is intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that a whaling ship has been [his] Yale
College and [his] Harvard. He seems to be a self-taught Renaissance man, good at everything but committed to nothing. Given the mythic,
romantic aspects of Moby-Dick, it is perhaps fitting that its narrator should be an enigma: not everything in a story so dependent on fate
and the seemingly supernatural needs to make perfect sense.
Additionally, Ishmael represents the fundamental contradiction between the story of Moby-Dick and its setting. Melville has
created a profound and philosophically complicated tale and set it in a world of largely uneducated working-class men; Ishmael, thus,
seems less a real character than an instrument of the author. No one else aboard the Pequod possesses the proper combination of
intellect and experience to tell this story. Indeed, at times even Ishmael fails Melvilles purposes, and he disappears from the story for long
stretches, replaced by dramatic dialogues and soliloquies from Ahab and other characters.
Ahab
Ahab, the Pequods obsessed captain, represents both an ancient and a quintessentially modern type of hero. Like the heroes of
Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus and
Faust. His tremendous overconfidence, or hubris, leads him to defy common sense and believe that, like a god, he can enact his will and
remain immune to the forces of nature. He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the White Whale
monomaniacally because he believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil. According to the critic M. H. Abrams, such a tragic hero
moves us to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because
we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible selves.
Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however, Ahab suffers from a fatal flaw that is not necessarily inborn but instead stems
from damage, in his case both psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a harsh world. He is as much a victim as he is an aggressor,
and the symbolic opposition that he constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels him toward what he considers a destined end.
Moby Dick
In a sense, Moby Dick is not a character, as the reader has no access to the White Whales thoughts, feelings, or intentions.
Instead, Moby Dick is an impersonal force, one that many critics have interpreted as an allegorical representation of God, an inscrutable
and all-powerful being that humankind can neither understand nor defy. Moby Dick thwarts free will and cannot be defeated, only
accommodated or avoided. Ishmael tries a plethora of approaches to describe whales in general, but none proves adequate. Indeed, as
Ishmael points out, the majority of a whale is hidden from view at all times. In this way, a whale mirrors its environment. Like the whale, only

the surface of the ocean is available for human observation and interpretation, while its depths conceal unknown and unknowable truths.
Furthermore, even when Ishmael does get his hands on a whole whale, he is unable to determine which partthe skeleton, the head, the
skinoffers the best understanding of the whole living, breathing creature; he cannot localize the essence of the whale. This conundrum
can be read as a metaphor for the human relationship with the Christian God (or any other god, for that matter): God is unknowable and
cannot be pinned down.
Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask
The Pequods three mates are used primarily to provide philosophical contrasts with Ahab. Starbuck, the first mate, is a religious man.
Sober and conservative, he relies on his Christian faith to determine his actions and interpretations of events. Stubb, the second mate, is
jolly and cool in moments of crisis. He has worked in the dangerous occupation of whaling for so long that the possibility of death has
ceased to concern him. A fatalist, he believes that things happen as they are meant to and that there is little that he can do about it. Flask
simply enjoys the thrill of the hunt and takes pride in killing whales. He doesnt stop to consider consequences at all and is utterly lost . . .
to all sense of reverence for the whale. All three of these perspectives are used to accentuate Ahabs monomania. Ahab reads his
experiences as the result of a conspiracy against him by some larger force. Unlike Flask, he thinks and interprets. Unlike Stubb, he
believes that he can alter his world. Unlike Starbuck, he places himself rather than some external set of principles at the center of the
cosmic order that he discerns.
Tashtego - Stubbs harpooner, Tashtego is a Gay Head Indian from Marthas Vineyard, one of the last of a tribe about to disappear.
Tashtego performs many of the skilled tasks aboard the ship, such as tapping the case of spermaceti in the whales head. Like Queequeg,
Tashtego embodies certain characteristics of the noble savage and is meant to defy racial stereotypes. He is, however, more practical
and less intellectual than Queequeg: like many a common sailor, Tashtego craves rum.
Daggoo - Flasks harpooner. Daggoo is a physically enormous, imperious-looking African. Like Queequeg, he stowed away on a whaling
ship that stopped near his home. Daggoo is less prominent in the narrative than either Queequeg or Tashtego.
Pip - A young black boy who fills the role of a cabin boy or jester on the Pequod. Pip has a minimal role in the beginning of the narrative
but becomes important when he goes insane after being left to drift alone in the sea for some time. Like the fools in Shakespeares plays,
he is half idiot and half prophet, often perceiving things that others dont.
Fedallah - A strange, oriental old Parsee (Persian fire-worshipper) whom Ahab has brought on board unbeknownst to most of the crew.
Fedallah has a very striking appearance: around his head is a turban made from his own hair, and he wears a black Chinese jacket and
pants. He is an almost supernaturally skilled hunter and also serves as a prophet to Ahab. Fedallah keeps his distance from the rest of the
crew, who for their part view him with unease.
Peleg - A well-to-do retired whaleman of Nantucket and a Quaker. As one of the principal owners of the Pequod, Peleg, along with Captain
Bildad, takes care of hiring the crew. When the two are negotiating wages for Ishmael and Queequeg, Peleg plays the generous one,
although his salary offer is not terribly impressive.
Bildad - Another well-to-do Quaker ex-whaleman from Nantucket who owns a large share of the Pequod. Bildad is (or pretends to be)
crustier than Peleg in negotiations over wages. Both men display a business sense and a bloodthirstiness unusual for Quakers, who are
normally pacifists.
Father Mapple - A former whaleman and now the preacher in the New Bedford Whalemans Chapel. Father Mapple delivers a sermon on
Jonah and the whale in which he uses the Bible to address the whalemens lives. Learned but also experienced, he is an example of
someone whose trials have led him toward God rather than bitterness or revenge.
Captain Boomer - The jovial captain of the English whaling ship the Samuel Enderby. Boomer lost his arm in an accident involving Moby
Dick. Unlike Ahab, Boomer is glad to have escaped with his life, and he sees further pursuit of the whale as madness. He is a foil for Ahab,
as the two men react in different ways to a similar experience.
Gabriel - A sailor aboard the Jeroboam. Part of a Shaker sect, Gabriel has prophesied that Moby Dick is the incarnation of the Shaker god
and that any attempts to harm him will result in disaster. His prophecies have been borne out by the death of the Jeroboams mate in a
whale hunt and the plague that rages aboard the ship.
THEMES
The Limits of Knowledge
As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple collection of literary excerpts mentioning whales, he discovers that,
throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible multiplicity of meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly
every discipline known to man in his attempts to understand the essential nature of the whale. Each of these systems of knowledge,
however, including art, taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an adequate account. The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes,
coupled with his compulsive need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of observation (men cannot
see the depths of the ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always limited and insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick
himself, this limitation takes on allegorical significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are unknowable to man,
and thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab does, is inevitably futile and often fatal.
The Deceptiveness of Fate
In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events, Ishmaels narrative contains many references to fate, creating the
impression that the Pequods doom is inevitable. Many of the sailors believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the
future. A number of things suggest, however, that characters are actually deluding themselves when they think that they see the work of
fate and that fate either doesnt exist or is one of the many forces about which human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for
example, clearly exploits the sailors belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for Moby Dick is their common destiny.
Moreover, the prophesies of Fedallah and others seem to be undercut in Chapter 99, when various individuals interpret the doubloon in
different ways, demonstrating that humans project what they want to see when they try to interpret signs and portents.
The Exploitative Nature of Whaling
At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship in the midst of a racist, hierarchically structured world. The ships
crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all races who seem to get along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon
meeting Queequeg, but he quickly realizes that it is better to have a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian for a shipmate. Additionally,
the conditions of work aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of egalitarianism, since men are promoted and paid according to their
skill. However, the work of whaling parallels the other exploitative activitiesbuffalo hunting, gold mining, unfair trade with indigenous
peoplesthat characterize American and European territorial expansion. Each of the Pequods mates, who are white, is entirely dependent

on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask actually stands on Daggoo, his
African harpooner, in order to beat the other mates to a prize whale. Ahab is depicted as walking over the black youth Pip, who listens to
Ahabs pacing from below deck, and is thus reminded that his value as a slave is less than the value of a whale.
MOTIFS
Whiteness
Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and threatening: albinos, creatures that live in extreme and
inhospitable environments, waves breaking against rocks. These examples reverse the traditional association of whiteness with purity.
Whiteness conveys both a lack of meaning and an unreadable excess of meaning that confounds individuals. Moby Dick is the pinnacle of
whiteness, and Melvilles characters cannot objectively understand the White Whale. Ahab, for instance, believes that Moby Dick
represents evil, while Ishmael fails in his attempts to determine scientifically the whales fundamental nature.
Surfaces and Depths
Ishmael frequently bemoans the impossibility of examining anything in its entirety, noting that only the surfaces of objects and environments
are available to the human observer. On a live whale, for example, only the outer layer presents itself; on a dead whale, it is impossible to
determine what constitutes the whales skin, or which partskeleton, blubber, headoffers the best understanding of the entire animal.
Moreover, as the whale swims, it hides much of its body underwater, away from the human gaze, and no one knows where it goes or what
it does. The sea itself is the greatest frustration in this regard: its depths are mysterious and inaccessible to Ishmael. This motif represents
the larger problem of the limitations of human knowledge. Humankind is not all-seeing; we can only observe, and thus only acquire
knowledge about, that fraction of entitiesboth individuals and environmentsto which we have access: surfaces.
SYMBOLS
The Pequod
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long survive the arrival of white men and thus memorializing an
extinction, the Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the
mementos of violent death. It is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin, the Pequod becomes one.
Moby Dick
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals. To the Pequods crew, the legendary White Whale is a concept
onto which they can displace their anxieties about their dangerous and often very frightening jobs. Because they have no delusions about
Moby Dick acting malevolently toward men or literally embodying evil, tales about the whale allow them to confront their fear, manage it,
and continue to function. Ahab, on the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is a manifestation of all that is wrong with the world, and he
feels that it is his destiny to eradicate this symbolic evil.
Moby Dick also bears out interpretations not tied down to specific characters. In its inscrutable silence and mysterious habits, for example,
the White Whale can be read as an allegorical representation of an unknowable God. As a profitable commodity, it fits into the scheme of
white economic expansion and exploitation in the nineteenth century. As a part of the natural world, it represents the destruction of the
environment by such hubristic expansion.
Queequegs Coffin
Queequegs coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has it built when he is seriously ill, but when he recovers, it becomes a
chest to hold his belongings and an emblem of his will to live. He perpetuates the knowledge tattooed on his body by carving it onto the
coffins lid. The coffin further comes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces the Pequods life buoy. When the Pequod sinks, the
coffin becomes Ishmaels buoy, saving not only his life but the life of the narrative that he will pass on.
WHITMAN POETRY
Whitmans poetry is democratic in both its subject matter and its language. As the great lists that make up a large part of
Whitmans poetry show, anythingand anyoneis fair game for a poem. Whitman is concerned with cataloguing the new America he sees
growing around him. Just as America is far different politically and practically from its European counterparts, so too must American poetry
distinguish itself from previous models. Thus we see Whitman breaking new ground in both subject matter and diction.
In a way, though, Whitman is not so unique. His preference for the quotidian links him with both Dante, who was the first to write
poetry in a vernacular language, and with Wordsworth, who famously stated that poetry should aim to speak in the language of ordinary
men. Unlike Wordsworth, however, Whitman does not romanticize the proletariat or the peasant. Instead he takes as his model himself.
The stated mission of his poetry was, in his words, to make [a]n attempt to put a Person, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the
19th century, in America) freely, fully, and truly on record. A truly democratic poetry, for Whitman, is one that, using a common language, is
able to cross the gap between the self and another individual, to effect a sympathetic exchange of experiences.
This leads to a distinct blurring of the boundaries between the self and the world and between public and private. Whitman prefers spaces
and situationslike journeys, the out-of-doors, citiesthat allow for ambiguity in these respects. Thus we see poems like Song of the
Open Road and Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, where the poet claims to be able to enter into the heads of others. Exploration becomes not
just a trope but a mode of existence.
For Whitman, spiritual communion depends on physical contact, or at least proximity. The body is the vessel that enables the soul
to experience the world. Therefore the body is something to be worshipped and given a certain primacy. Eroticism, particularly
homoeroticism, figures significantly in Whitmans poetry. This is something that got him in no small amount of trouble during his lifetime.
The erotic interchange of his poetry, though, is meant to symbolize the intense but always incomplete connection between individuals.
Having sex is the closest two people can come to being one merged individual, but the boundaries of the body always prevent a complete
union. The affection Whitman shows for the bodies of others, both men and women, comes out of his appreciation for the linkage between
the body and the soul and the communion that can come through physical contact. He also has great respect for the reproductive and
generative powers of the body, which mirror the intellects generation of poetry.
The Civil War diminished Whitmans faith in democratic sympathy. While the cause of the war nominally furthered brotherhood and
equality, the war itself was a quagmire of killing. Reconstruction, which began to fail almost immediately after it was begun, further
disappointed Whitman. His later poetry, which displays a marked insecurity about the place of poetry and the place of emotion in general
(see in particular When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd), is darker and more isolated.

Whitmans style remains consistent throughout, however. The poetic structures he employs are unconventional but reflect his democratic
ideals. Lists are a way for him to bring together a wide variety of items without imposing a hierarchy on them. Perception, rather than
analysis, is the basis for this kind of poetry, which uses few metaphors or other kinds of symbolic language. Anecdotes are another favored
device. By transmitting a story, often one he has gotten from another individual, Whitman hopes to give his readers a sympathetic
experience, which will allow them to incorporate the anecdote into their own history. The kind of language Whitman uses sometimes
supports and sometimes seems to contradict his philosophy. He often uses obscure, foreign, or invented words. This, however, is not
meant to be intellectually elitist but is instead meant to signify Whitmans status as a unique individual. Democracy does not necessarily
mean sameness. The difficulty of some of his language also mirrors the necessary imperfection of connections between individuals: no
matter how hard we try, we can never completely understand each other. Whitman largely avoids rhyme schemes and other traditional
poetic devices. He does, however, use meter in masterful and innovative ways, often to mimic natural speech. In these ways, he is able to
demonstrate that he has mastered traditional poetry but is no longer subservient to it, just as democracy has ended the subservience of the
individual.

Themes
Democracy As a Way of Life
Whitman envisioned democracy not just as a political system but as a way of experiencing the world. In the early nineteenth century,
people still harbored many doubts about whether the United States could survive as a country and about whether democracy could thrive
as a political system. To allay those fears and to praise democracy, Whitman tried to be democratic in both life and poetry. He imagined
democracy as a way of interpersonal interaction and as a way for individuals to integrate their beliefs into their everyday lives. Song of
Myself notes that democracy must include all individuals equally, or else it will fail.
In his poetry, Whitman widened the possibilities of poetic diction by including slang, colloquialisms, and regional dialects, rather than
employing the stiff, erudite language so often found in nineteenth-century verse. Similarly, he broadened the possibilities of subject matter
by describing myriad people and places. Like William Wordsworth, Whitman believed that everyday life and everyday people were fit
subjects for poetry. Although much of Whitmans work does not explicitly discuss politics, most of it implicitly deals with democracy: it
describes communities of people coming together, and it imagines many voices pouring into a unified whole. For Whitman, democracy was
an idea that could and should permeate the world beyond politics, making itself felt in the ways we think, speak, work, fight, and even make
art.
The Cycle of Growth and Death
Whitmans poetry reflects the vitality and growth of the early United States. During the nineteenth century, America expanded at a
tremendous rate, and its growth and potential seemed limitless. But sectionalism and the violence of the Civil War threatened to break
apart and destroy the boundless possibilities of the United States. As a way of dealing with both the population growth and the massive
deaths during the Civil War, Whitman focused on the life cycles of individuals: people are born, they age and reproduce, and they die. Such
poems as When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd imagine death as an integral part of life. The speaker of When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloomd realizes that flowers die in the winter, but they rebloom in the springtime, and he vows to mourn his fallen friends every
year just as new buds are appearing. Describing the life cycle of nature helped Whitman contextualize the severe injuries and trauma he
witnessed during the Civil Warlinking death to life helped give the deaths of so many soldiers meaning.
The Beauty of the Individual
Throughout his poetry, Whitman praised the individual. He imagined a democratic nation as a unified whole composed of unique but equal
individuals. Song of Myself opens in a triumphant paean to the individual: I celebrate myself, and sing myself (1). Elsewhere the speaker
of that exuberant poem identifies himself as Walt Whitman and claims that, through him, the voices of many will speak. In this way, many
individuals make up the individual democracy, a single entity composed of myriad parts. Every voice and every part will carry the same
weight within the single democracyand thus every voice and every individual is equally beautiful. Despite this pluralist view, Whitman still
singled out specific individuals for praise in his poetry, particularly Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, Lincoln was assassinated, and Whitman
began composing several elegies, including O Captain! My Captain! Although all individuals were beautiful and worthy of praise, some
individuals merited their own poems because of their contributions to society and democracy.

Motifs

Lists
Whitman filled his poetry with long lists. Often a sentence will be broken into many clauses, separated by commas, and each clause will
describe some scene, person, or object. These lists create a sense of expansiveness in the poem, as they mirror the growth of the United
States. Also, these lists layer images atop one another to reflect the diversity of American landscapes and people. In Song of Myself, for
example, the speaker lists several adjectives to describe Walt Whitman in section 24. The speaker uses multiple adjectives to demonstrate
the complexity of the individual: true individuals cannot be described using just one or two words. Later in this section, the speaker also
lists the different types of voices who speak through Whitman. Lists are another way of demonstrating democracy in action: in lists, all
items possess equal weight, and no item is more important than another item in the list. In a democracy, all individuals possess equal
weight, and no individual is more important than another.
The Human Body
Whitmans poetry revels in its depictions of the human body and the bodys capacity for physical contact. The speaker of Song of Myself
claims that copulation is no more rank to me than death is (521) to demonstrate the naturalness of taking pleasure in the bodys physical
possibilities. With physical contact comes spiritual communion: two touching bodies form one individual unit of togetherness. Several
poems praise the bodies of both women and men, describing them at work, at play, and interacting. The speaker of I Sing the Body
Electric (1855) boldly praises the perfection of the human form and worships the body because the body houses the soul. This free
expression of sexuality horrified some of Whitmans early readers, and Whitman was fired from his job at the Indian Bureau in 1865
because the secretary of the interior found Leaves of Grass offensive. Whitmans unabashed praise of the male form has led many critics
to argue that he was homosexual or bisexual, but the repressive culture of the nineteenth century prevented him from truly expressing
those feelings in his work.
Rhythm and Incantation
Many of Whitmans poems rely on rhythm and repetition to create a captivating, spellbinding quality of incantation. Often, Whitman begins
several lines in a row with the same word or phrase, a literary device called anaphora. For example, the first four lines of When I Heard
the Learnd Astronomer (1865) each begin with the word when. The long lines of such poems as Song of Myself and When Lilacs Last in
the Dooryard Bloomd force readers to inhale several bits of text without pausing for breath, and this breathlessness contributes to the
incantatory quality of the poems. Generally, the anaphora and the rhythm transform the poems into celebratory chants, and the joyous form
and structure reflect the joyousness of the poetic content. Elsewhere, however, the repetition and rhythm contribute to an elegiac tone, as
in O Captain! My Captain! This poem uses short lines and words, such as heart and father, to mournfully incant an elegy for the
assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

Symbols
Plants
Throughout Whitmans poetry, plant life symbolizes both growth and multiplicity. Rapid, regular plant growth also stands in for the rapid,
regular expansion of the population of the United States. In When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd, Whitman uses flowers, bushes,
wheat, trees, and other plant life to signify the possibilities of regeneration and re-growth after death. As the speaker mourns the loss of
Lincoln, he drops a lilac spray onto the coffin; the act of laying a flower on the coffin not only honors the person who has died but lends
death a measure of dignity and respect. The title Leaves of Grass highlights another of Whitmans themes: the beauty of the individual.
Each leaf or blade of grass possesses its own distinct beauty, and together the blades form a beautiful unified whole, an idea Whitman
explores in the sixth section of Song of Myself. Multiple leaves of grass thus symbolize democracy, another instance of a beautiful whole
composed of individual parts. In 1860, Whitman published an edition of Leaves of Grass that included a number of poems celebrating love
between men. He titled this section The Calamus Poems, after the phallic calamus plant.

The Self
Whitmans interest in the self ties into his praise of the individual. Whitman links the self to the conception of poetry throughout his work,
envisioning the self as the birthplace of poetry. Most of his poems are spoken from the first person, using the pronoun I. The speaker of
Whitmans most famous poem, Song of Myself, even assumes the name Walt Whitman, but nevertheless the speaker remains a fictional
creation employed by the poet Whitman. Although Whitman borrows from his own autobiography for some of the speakers experiences, he
also borrows many experiences from popular works of art, music, and literature. Repeatedly the speaker of this poem exclaims that he
contains everything and everyone, which is a way for Whitman to reimagine the boundary between the self and the world. By imaging a

person capable of carrying the entire world within him, Whitman can create an elaborate analogy about the ideal democracy, which would,
like the self, be capable of containing the whole world.

TOM SAWYER
An imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River
town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the
fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his
friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for
memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a
question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two disciples were David and Goliath.
Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get engaged to him. Their romance collapses
when she learns that Tom has been engaged beforeto a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom
accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a cure for warts. At the graveyard, they
witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American half-breed Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away and swear a
blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is
wrongfully arrested, and Toms anxiety and guilt begin to grow.
Tom, Huck, and Toms friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their
newfound freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to
observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his
funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the
envy and admiration of all their friends.
Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Beckys favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon Muff
Potters trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a
window.
Summer arrives, and Tom and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below.
Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an
unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, Tom and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of
digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see Tom and Hucks
tools, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it.
Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to
McDougals Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows
and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the
violence and becomes an anonymous hero.
Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to
search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases
when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Eventually, just as the searchers
are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Beckys father, Judge Thatcher, locks up the cave. Injun Joe, trapped inside,
starves to death.
A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow
Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Toms
robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.
Tom Sawyer
When the novel begins, Tom is a mischievous child who envies Huck Finns lazy lifestyle and freedom. As Toms adventures proceed,
however, critical moments show Tom moving away from his childhood concerns and making mature, responsible decisions. These
moments include Toms testimony at Muff Potters trial, his saving of Becky from punishment, and his heroic navigation out of the cave. By
the end of the novel, Tom is coaxing Huck into staying at the Widow Douglass, urging his friend to accept tight collars, Sunday school, and
good table manners. He is no longer a disobedient character undermining the adult order, but a defender of respectability and
responsibility. In the end, growing up for Tom means embracing social custom and sacrificing the freedoms of childhood.
Yet Toms development isnt totally coherent. The novel jumps back and forth among several narrative strands: Toms general misbehavior,
which climaxes in the Jacksons Island adventure; his courtship of Becky, which culminates in his acceptance of blame for the book that
she rips; and his struggle with Injun Joe, which ends with Tom and Hucks discovery of the treasure. Because of the picaresque, or
episodic, nature of the plot, Toms character can seem inconsistent, as it varies depending upon his situation. Tom is a paradoxical figure in
some respectsfor example, he has no determinate age. Sometimes Tom shows the navet of a smaller child, with his interest in makebelieve and superstitions. On the other hand, Toms romantic interest in Becky and his fascination with Hucks smoking and drinking seem
more the concerns of an adolescent.
Whether or not a single course of development characterizes Toms adventures, a single character traitToms unflagging energy and
thirst for adventurepropels the novel from episode to episode. Disobedient though he may be, Tom ends up as St. Petersburgs hero. As
the town gossips say, [Tom] would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.
Huckleberry Finn
In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain created a character who exemplifies freedom within, and from, American society. Huck lives on the
margins of society because, as the son of the town drunk, he is pretty much an orphan. He sleeps where he pleases, provided that nobody
chases him off, and he eats when he pleases, provided that he can find a morsel. No one requires him to attend school or church, bathe, or
dress respectably. It is understandable, if not expected, that Huck smokes and swears. Years of having to fend for himself have invested
Huck with a solid common sense and a practical competence that complement Toms dreamy idealism and fantastical approach to reality

(Tom creates worlds for himself that are based on those in stories he has read). But Huck does have two traits in common with Tom: a zest
for adventure and a belief in superstition.
Through Huck, Twain weighs the costs and benefits of living in a society against those of living independently of society. For most of the
novel, adult society disapproves of Huck, but because Twain renders Huck such a likable boy, the adults disapproval of Huck generally
alienates us from them and not from Huck himself. After Huck saves the Widow Douglas and gets rich, the scale tips in the direction of
living in society. But Huck, unlike Tom, isnt convinced that the exchange of freedom for stability is worth it. He has little use for the money
he has found and is quite devoted to his rough, independent lifestyle. When the novel ends, Huck, like Tom, is still a work in progress, and
we arent sure whether the Widow Douglass attempts to civilize him will succeed (Twain reserves the conclusion of Hucks story for his
later novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).
Injun Joe
Injun Joe is Tom Sawyers villain. His actions are motivated, from beginning to end, by unadulterated malevolence. When Injun Joe
explains his motivation for revenge against Dr. Robinson and later against the Widow Douglas, we see that his personal history involves
others mistreating and excluding him. Yet the disproportion between the wrongs Injun Joe has sufferedat least as he enumerates them
and the level of vengeance he hopes to exact is so extreme that we arent tempted to excuse his behavior. In contrast, Muff Potters
misdeeds are inconsequential compared to the punishment he stands to receive. One might also compare Injun Joe to Sid: both are
motivated by malice, which they paper over with a convincing performance of innocence.
Though his appearance changes when he disguises himself as a deaf and mute Spaniard, Injun Joe undergoes no real character
development over the course of the novel. He never seems to repent for his crimes or change his spiteful outlook. His reappearances in
different parts of the novel help to provide a thread of continuity, as they bring the murder-case plot, the treasure-hunt plot, and the
adventures-in-the-cave plots together into a single narrative. Injun Joes presence also adds suspense to the novel, because we have very
little sense of whether Tom and Hucks constant fear that Injun Joe will hurt them has any basis in reality.
Aunt Polly - Toms aunt and guardian. Aunt Polly is a simple, kindhearted woman who struggles to balance her love for her nephew with
her duty to discipline him. She generally fails in her attempts to keep Tom under control because, although she worries about Toms safety,
she seems to fear constraining him too much. Above all, Aunt Polly wants to be appreciated and loved.
Joe Harper - Toms bosom friend and frequent playmate. Joe is a typical best friend, a convention Twain parodies when he refers to Joe
and Tom as two souls with but a single thought. Though Joe mostly mirrors Tom, he diverges from Toms example when he is the first of
the boys to succumb to homesickness on Jacksons Island. As the novel progresses, Huck begins to assume Joes place as Toms
companion.
Sid - Toms half-brother. Sid is a goody-goody who enjoys getting Tom into trouble. He is mean-spirited but presents a superficial show of
model behavior. He is thus the opposite of Tom, who is warmhearted but behaves badly.
Mary - Toms sweet, almost saintly cousin. Mary holds a soft spot for Tom. Like Sid, she is well behaved, but unlike him, she acts out of
genuine affection rather than malice.
Muff Potter - A hapless drunk and friend of Injun Joe. Potter is kind and grateful toward Tom and Huck, who bring him presents after he is
wrongly jailed for Dr. Robinsons murder. Potters nave trust eventually pushes Toms conscience to the breaking point, compelling Tom to
tell the truth at Potters trial about who actually committed the murder.
Dr. Robinson - A respected local physician. Dr. Robinson shows his more sordid side on the night of his murder: he hires Injun Joe and
Muff Potter to dig up Hoss Williamss grave because he wants to use the corpse for medical experiments.
Mr. Sprague - The minister of the town church.
The Widow Douglas - A kindhearted, pious resident of St. Petersburg whom the children recognize as a friend. Tom knows that the
Widow Douglas will give him and Becky ice cream and let them sleep over. She is kind to Huck even before she learns that he saved her
life.
Mr. Jones - A Welshman who lives with his sons near the Widow Douglass house. Mr. Jones responds to Hucks alarm on the night that
Injun Joe intends to attack the widow, and he takes care of Huck in the aftermath.
Judge Thatcher - Beckys father, the county judge. A local celebrity, Judge Thatcher inspires the respect of all the townspeople. He takes
responsibility for issues affecting the community as a whole, such as closing the cave for safety reasons and taking charge of the boys
treasure money.
Jim - Aunt Pollys young slave.
Amy Lawrence - Toms former love. Tom abandons Amy when Becky Thatcher comes to town.
Ben Rogers - One of Toms friends, whom Tom persuades to whitewash Aunt Pollys fence.
Alfred Temple - A well-dressed new boy in town. Like Amy Lawrence, Alfred gets caught in the crossfire of Tom and Beckys love games,
as Becky pretends to like him in order to make Tom jealous.
Mr. Walters - The somewhat ridiculous Sunday school superintendent. Because he aspires to please Judge Thatcher, Mr. Walters rewards
Tom with a Bible, even though he knows that Tom hasnt earned it.
Mr. Dobbins - The schoolmaster. Mr. Dobbins seems a slightly sad character: his ambition to be a medical doctor has been thwarted and
he has become a heavy drinker and the butt of schoolboy pranks.
THEMES
Moral and Social Maturation
When the novel opens, Tom is engaged in and often the organizer of childhood pranks and make-believe games. As the novel progresses,
these initially consequence-free childish games take on more and more gravity. Tom leads himself, Joe Harper, Huck, and, in the cave,
Becky Thatcher into increasingly dangerous situations. He also finds himself in predicaments in which he must put his concern for others
above his concern for himself, such as when he takes Beckys punishment and when he testifies at Injun Joes trial. As Tom begins to take
initiative to help others instead of himself, he shows his increasing maturity, competence, and moral integrity.
Toms adventures to Jacksons Island and McDougals Cave take him away from society. These symbolic removals help to prepare him to
return to the village with a new, more adult outlook on his relationship to the community. Though early on Tom looks up to Huck as much
older and wiser, by the end of the novel, Toms maturity has surpassed Hucks. Toms personal growth is evident in his insistence, in the
face of Hucks desire to flee all social constraints, that Huck stay with the Widow Douglas and become civilized.
Societys Hypocrisy
Twain complicates Toms position on the border between childhood and adulthood by ridiculing and criticizing the values and practices of
the adult world toward which Tom is heading. Twains harshest satire exposes the hypocrisyand often the essential childishnessof

social institutions such as school, church, and the law, as well as public opinion. He also mocks individuals, although when doing so he
tends to be less biting and focuses on flaws of character that we understand to be universal.
Twain shows that social authority does not always operate on wise, sound, or consistent principles and that institutions fall prey to the
same kinds of mistakes that individuals do. In his depiction of families, Twain shows parental authority and constraint balanced by parental
love and indulgence. Though she attempts to restrain and punish Tom, Aunt Polly always relents because of her love for her nephew. As
the novel proceeds, a similar tendency toward indulgence becomes apparent within the broader community as well. The community shows
its indulgence when Toms dangerous adventures provoke an outpouring of concern: the community is perfectly ready to forgive Toms
wrongs if it can be sure of his safety. Twain ridicules the ability of this collective tendency toward generosity and forgiveness to go
overboard when he describes the towns sentimental forgiveness of the villainous Injun Joe after his death.
The games the children play often seem like attempts to subvert authority and escape from conventional society. Skipping school, sneaking
out at night, playing tricks on the teacher, and running away for days at a time are all ways of breaking the rules and defying authority. Yet,
Twain shows us that these games can be more conventional than they seem. Tom is highly concerned with conforming to the codes of
behavior that he has learned from reading, and he outlines the various criteria that define a pirate, a Robin Hood, or a circus clown. The
boys obsession with superstition is likewise an addiction to convention, which also mirrors the adult societys focus on religion. Thus, the
novel shows that adult existence is more similar to childhood existence than it might seem. Though the novel is critical of societys
hypocrisythat is, of the frequent discord between its values and its behaviorTwain doesnt really advocate subversion. The novel
demonstrates the potential dangers of subverting authority just as it demonstrates the dangers of adhering to authority too strictly.
Freedom through Social Exclusion
St. Petersburg is an insular community in which outsiders are easily identified. The most notable local outsiders include Huck Finn, who
fends for himself outside of any family structure because his father is a drunkard; Muff Potter, also a drunk; and Injun Joe, a malevolent
half-breed. Despite the communitys clear separation of outsiders from insiders, however, it seems to have a strong impulse toward
inclusiveness. The community tolerates the drunkenness of a harmless rascal like Muff Potter, and Huck is more or less protected even
though he exists on the fringes of society. Tom too is an orphan who has been taken in by Aunt Polly out of love and filial responsibility.
Injun Joe is the only resident of St. Petersburg who is completely excluded from the community. Only after Injun Joes death are the
townspeople able to transform him, through their manipulation of his memory, into a tolerable part of St. Petersburg society.
Hucks exclusion means that many of the other children are not allowed to play with him. He receives no structured education and often
does not even have enough to eat or a place to sleep. Twain minimizes these concerns, however, in favor of presenting the freedom that
Hucks low social status affords him. Huck can smoke and sleep outside and do all the things that the other boys dream of doing, with very
little constraint. Hucks windfall at the end of the novel, when the boys find the treasure, threatens to stifle his freedom. The Widow
Douglass attentions force Huck to change his lifestyle, something Huck would probably never choose to do on his own. By linking Hucks
acquisition of the treasure with his assimilation into St. Petersburg society, Twain emphasizes the association between financial standing
and social standing. Besides the obvious fact that money is an important ingredient in social acceptance, social existence clearly is itself a
kind of economy, in which certain costs accompany certain benefits. The price of social inclusion is a loss of complete freedom.
Superstition in an Uncertain World
Twain first explores superstition in the graveyard, where Tom and Huck go to try out a magical cure for warts. From this point forward,
superstition becomes an important element in all of the boys decision-making. The convenient aspect of Tom and Hucks superstitious
beliefs is that there are so many of them, and they are so freely interpretable; Tom and Huck can pick and choose whichever belief suits
their needs at the time. In this regard, Twain suggests, superstition bears a resemblance to religionat least as the populace of St.
Petersburg practices it.
The humorousness of the boys obsession with witches, ghosts, and graveyards papers over, to some extent, the real horror of the
circumstances to which the boys are exposed: grave digging, murder, starvation, and attempted mutilation. The relative ease with which
they assimilate these ghastly events into their childish world is perhaps one of the least realistic aspects of the novel. (If the novel were
written today, we might expect to read about the psychic damage these extreme childhood experiences have done to these boys.) The
boys negotiate all this horror because they exist in a world suspended somewhere between reality and make-believe. Their fear of death is
real and pervasive, for example, but we also have the sense that they do not really understand death and all of its ramifications.
MOTIFS
Crime
The many crimes committed in the novel range from minor childhood transgressions to capital offensesfrom playing hooky to murder.
The games the boys prefer center on crime as well, giving them a chance to explore the boldness and heroism involved in breaking social
expectations without actually threatening the social order. The boys want to be pirates, robbers, and murderers even though they feel
remorse when they actually commit the minor crime of stealing bacon. The two scenes in which Tom plays Robin Hoodwho, in stealing
from the rich and giving to the poor is both a criminal and a heroare emblematic of how Tom associates crime with defending values and
even altering the structure of society.
Trading
The children in the novel maintain an elaborate miniature economy in which they constantly trade amongst themselves treasures that
would be junk to adults. These exchanges replicate the commercial relationships in which the children will have to engage when they get
older. Many of the complications that money creates appear in their exchanges. Tom swindles his friends out of all their favorite objects
through a kind of false advertising when he sells them the opportunity to whitewash the fence. He then uses his newly acquired wealth to
buy power and prestige at Sunday schoolrewards that should be earned rather than bought. When Tom and Joe fight over the tick in
class, we see a case in which a disagreement leads the boys, who have been sharing quite civilly, to revert to a quarrel over ownership.
The jump from this small-scale property holding at the beginning of the novel to the $12,000 treasure at the end is an extreme one. In spite
of all Tom and Hucks practice, their money is given to a responsible adult. With their healthy allowance, the boys can continue to explore
their role as commercial citizens, but at a more moderate rate.
The Circus
The boys mention again and again their admiration for the circus life and their desire to be clowns when they grow up. These references
emphasize the innocence with which they approach the world. Rather than evaluate the real merits and shortcomings of the various
occupations Tom and Hank could realistically choose, they like to imagine themselves in roles they find romantic or exciting.
Showing Off

Toms showing off is mostly directed toward Becky Thatcher. When he shows off initially, we guess that he literally prances around and
does gymnastics. Later, the means by which Tom and Becky try to impress each other grow more subtle, as they manipulate Amy and
Alfred in an effort to make each other jealous.
In the Sunday school scene, Twain reveals that showing off is not strictly a childhood practice. The adults who are supposed to be authority
figures in the church are so awed by Judge Thatcher and so eager to attract his attention and approval that they too begin to behave like
children. The room devolves into an absolute spectacle of ridiculous behavior by children and adults alike, culminating in the public
embarrassment in which Tom exposes his ignorance of the Bible.
SYMBOLS
The Cave
The cave represents a trial that Tom has to pass before he can graduate into maturity. Coming-of-age stories often involve tests in which
the protagonist is separated from the rest of the society for a period of time and faces significant dangers or challenges. Only after having
survived on the strength of his personal resources is Tom ready to rejoin society.
The Storm
The storm on Jacksons Island symbolizes the danger involved in the boys removal from society. It forms part of an interruptive pattern in
the novel, in which periods of relative peace and tranquility alternate with episodes of high adventure or danger. Later, when Tom is sick, he
believes that the storm hit to indicate that Gods wrath is directed at him personally. The storm thus becomes an external symbol of Toms
conscience.
The Treasure
The treasure is a symbolic goal that marks the end of the boys journey. It becomes a indicator of Toms transition into adulthood and
Hucks movement into civilized society. It also symbolizes the boys heroism, marking them as exceptional in a world where conformity is
the rule.
The Village
Many readers interpret the small village of St. Petersburg as a microcosm of the United States or of society in general. All of the major
social institutions are present on a small scale in the village and all are susceptible to Twains comic treatment. The challenges and joys
Tom encounters in the village are, in their basic structure, ones that he or any reader could expect to meet anywhere