Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 35

THE PASSAGE OF GROWTH IN
THREE MODERN M YTH S:
A COMPARISON OF THE ADVEN

TURES OF TOM SAWYER,
SWAMIAND FRIENDS, AND LORD
OF THE FLIES

If the child symbolizes the invincible spirit, the adolescent is
an archetypal image o f growth in all literature. One of the earliest
comments on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer refers to the univer
sality of the theme of the novel. “The story is a wonderful study o f
the boy-mind, which inhabits a world quite distinct from that in
which he is bodily present with his elders, and in this lies its great
charm and its universality, for boy-nature, however human nature
varies, is the same everywhere.” (Howells 59) We can see parallels
to this in R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends and Golding’s Lord
of the Flies, though there are also significant differences. All o f the
three novels have almost become modem myths on this perennial
theme in so far as they evoke the eternal child in every one of us
encountering the alien world and enact the ritual o f initiation into
the adult world. The purpose of this paper is to compare the passage
of the growth from childhood through adolescence to adulthood in
the three novels and see the similarities and differences which
confirm the universality in pattern, though the realizations vary
according to the cultural types they embody: Southwestern A m eri
can, South Indian, and European.
O f the three novels, Adventures ofTom Sawyer and Swami and

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