Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 36

Friends show the adolescent experiencing anguish and expressing
his protest over the tyranny of the adult world symbolized by the
school. Tom ’s struggle with the adult world is brought out in his
relationship with Aunt Polly who has to play the dual role o f a
loving mother and a strict father and she expresses her dilemma:
Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt
me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most
breaks. Well-a-well, man that is bom of woman is
of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says,
and I reckon it’s so. H e’ll play hooky this evening,
and I ’ll just be obleeged to make him work, tomor
row, to punish him. It’s might hard to make him
work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holi
day, but he hates work more than he hates anything
else, and I ’ve got to do some o f my duty by him, or
I ’ll be the ruination of the child. (Tom Sawver 12)
But the worlds don ’t seem to converge— because when Tom white
washes the fence on a Saturday, he finds pleasure not in getting the
reward, but in the glory o f having tricked Aunt Polly. Louis
Rubin’s analysis of the first few paragraphs also indicates this:
“The role that Tom plays in the very first scene is one in which he
will be cast throughout the story— that of a child engaged in an
attempt to outwit the adult world.” (Rubin 181) On the other hand,
the old lady is betrayed by the way she wears her lenses— she does
not look through them but over or under them. Right in the
beginning, the world of imagination is in conflict with the world o f
limited perception.
In Swami and Friends also the adolescent’s aloofness at home
is emphasized right in the beginning and, in this case, the father
represents the world of tyranny. Swami’s main objection is to his

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