The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1087Innocence and experIence in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The concepts of innocence and experience are
generally interpreted as opposites, but in real life
things are more complicated. Innocence of evil may
mean purity of heart and mind, but innocence may
also imply lack of knowledge. Moreover, the inno-
cence of children is different from the innocence of
adults. Experience, on the other hand, may mean
possession of knowledge of the world, but it may
also entail the awareness that evil is part and parcel
of the world and cannot be avoided. Experience can
make one a better person, but it can also pervert
one’s soul.
Innocence and experience play an important
part in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
because the book describes the main character’s
journey from innocence to experience, from child-
hood to adulthood. Tom and his companions can
be considered innocent children: They are young,
playful, and their problems revolve around the
issues of their age—flirting, what to do to be in
the limelight, or how to have greater fun. Tom’s
pranks reveal both his ingenuity and naïveté. He
believes he can cheat the others and get away with
it, but his schemes are always discovered and he is
punished. But there is one child in the community
who is regarded differently: Huckleberry Finn, the
homeless son of a drunkard, an outcast. To many,
he is far from the innocence of the other children.
Not observing the traditional rules of civilized
life, he is, of necessity, evil, and his “experience”
does not set the right example for ordinary boys.
Actually, he is more innocent than the town boys,
being kind, credulous, highly superstitious, and
uneducated. The kind of “experience” he represents
is far from being harmful; he only lives by other
norms than those publicly accepted. Tom, on the
other hand, innocent and childish as he is, behaves
like an experienced person. He has very good psy-
chological insight arising both from his immediate
experience and his innate ability to read people’s
minds. His manipulation of others (as in the famous
whitewashing-the-fence scene) and his artfulness
in dealing with Aunt Polly’s attempts to make him
confess he went swimming are manifestations of
his “experience.” They do not arise from a perverted
sense of moral conduct but are simply forms of pro-
tecting his freedom and ways of getting away with
the small “liberties” he takes.
The innocence of adult characters does not
relate to their lack of knowledge but, rather, to an
unusually candid view of the world. Aunt Polly
and Muff Potter are the best representatives of
innocent grown-ups, easy to deceive just because
they do not regard the world to be mischievous.
It is not by accident that Aunt Polly falls victim
to Tom’s reiterated lies, or Muff Potter to Injun
Joe’s plot.
Experience is regarded as the privilege of grown-
ups. If we take experience to be, among other
things, the awareness of evil, then Tom’s genuine
encounter with experience is when he witnesses Dr.
Robinson’s murder. The whole chain of events that
follows—Injun Joe’s false deposition and Potter’s
imprisonment, Tom’s exposing the real murderer in
court, his revelation that Injun Joe is still in town,
and his final discovery of the treasure buried in the
cave—are only phases in his progress from adoles-
cent innocence to mature experience. His “initiation”
starts with a murder in the dark he witnesses after
his descent into the labyrinth of McDougal’s cave
and culminates with the death of the murderer in
the dark of the cave. At the end of his journey, Tom
reaches maturity. He is rewarded with a treasure,
moral authority in his community, and Becky’s love,
which translates Twain’s concept of experience into
gaining money, fame, and love after evil was defeated
in fair combat.
Huck is Tom’s shadow throughout the book, a
lesser companion who follows him everywhere and
is, at times, an extension of Tom, as when he spies
on Injun Joe’s actions while Tom is trapped in the
cave. Huck follows the same path as Tom and enjoys
the same final rewards, except for love. But he resists
maturity and rejects experience in favor of his initial
state of innocence, which he associates with his for-
mer status and way of living.
Innocence and experience in The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer are explored in terms of their relation
to evil. The novel clearly points out that children
exposed to evil lose their innocence and gain more
profound knowledge of the world.
Aloisia Sorop