The Composition and the Structure of Tom Sawyer

Abstract

T HE STRUCTURE OF The Adventures of has for some time marked a point of divergence among Twain scholars. Walter Blair's study On the Structure of Sawyer suggested that the book was organized as the story of a boy's maturation, presented to the reader through four lines of action-the and Becky story, the Muff Potter story, the Jackson's Island adventure, and the Injun Joe story-each of which begins with an immature act and ends with a relatively mature act by Tom.' Blair's interpretation has been accepted by Dixon Wecter, who agreed that Tom and Huck grow visibly as we follow them,2 by Gladys Bellamy,3 and E. H. Long.4 But it has been ignored by DeLancey Ferguson, who claimed that Tom Sawyer, in short, grew as grows the grass; it was not art at all, but it was life.5 It was disclaimed by Alexander Cowie, who stated that lives in small units, which when added up (not arranged) equal the sum of boyhood experience.6 And most recently, Roger Asselineau dismissed Blair's hypothesis as a mere tour de force when he suggested, This attempt at introducing logic and order into a book which had been rather desultorily composed was interesting, but not fully convincing. Such a posteriori conclusions, however tempting, smacked of artificiality and could only contain a measure of truth.7 These, then, are the two poles: that has a narrative plan and exhibits what was for Twain a high degree of literary craftsmanship; or that it is a ragbag of memories, thrown together