Tom Sawyer Goes Too Far

Even though Tom Sawyer is just a young boy in the chapter "Here a Captive Heart Busted," his actions cross the boundary of child's play and enter into the boundaries of wrongdoing. This comical, yet tedious chapter in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gives insight into a main point of the novel, that Jim is a human being just like the whites and deserves to be treated like one. At this pre-Civil war …

…Tom's requests and attitude show that he does not take Jim seriously as a human being. This attitude contrasts to that of Huck who has learned to value Jim through the relationship he formed with Jim on the river. Mark Twain fashions these details to infuriate readers at the injustice of slavery and challenges them to regard former slaves as whole human beings. To treat them negligibly is to be as outlandish as Tom Sawyer.