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The Ideal Town in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain develops the ideal town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, where Thomas Sawyer and his friends find fun an amusement. Twain also forms the character Huckleberry Finn, and it is through Huck, that Twain creates a character who symbolizes the freedom away from American civilization. Tom is a mischief maker who finds amusement, mischief, and terror everywhere. Enter Huckleberry Finn, one of Tom’s close friends. Huck was “cordially hated and dreaded by all mothers in town” (Twain 42), and when saying that he is the son of the town drunkard, he is essentially an orphan. Years of fending for himself has given Huck solid common sense that goes against Tom’s dreamy idealism and fantastical approach to reality. Throughout the novel, Huckleberry Finn begins to venture out of his shell and develops as a character through his interactions with Tom, Mr. Jones, and the community of St. Petersburg. Huck is introduced by Twain as “idle and lawless and vulgar—and bad,” (Twain 42), which mothers around the town hate and have banned children from talking to him. As the story develops, Huck is not the idle and lawless child St. Petersburg has made him out to be, but he turns to be a daring and mature boy who accompanies Tom in his mischief and “I didn’t thinks.” Twain then further tells about Huck’s lifestyle by stating that, “Huckleberry came and went, at his free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did

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