Tom Sawyer Characters

Tom Sawyer is one of those kids who seems to just want to be free. All he wants to do is run around with no one telling him what to do. He plays hookie every day it seems, and when there's no school you are NOT going to find him at home. But that isn't his whole personality, he has many sides of himself just like everyone else does. There are times you see that he has feelings that can be hurt, he can care about people, he wants other people to care about him, and he does try to be good (though it doesn't always turn out so well). Tom Sawyer is a miscreant, but he has a good heart.

Huckleberry Finn. He's hated by all the neighborhood moms, and admired by all the neighborhood boys. He has no family other than a dad that's always drunk, and he lives on the outskirts of town in a run down shack. He has as much freedom as a boy could want...But is he really that happy? Sure, he has all the stuff most little boys dream of having, but he doesn't have the thing that most boys already have (though they never notice how lucky they are to have it). This object is called love. He has no one who really cares about him. No ones there to be proud of him when he does something good, or to help him out of the many dangers that life tends to hold. He's all alone it seems in a large world, and it's not all that it's cut out to be.

Aunt Polly is the nice motherly figure of Toms. Aunt Polly (even though she's not his real mother) loves Tom to death but, like all moms, she worries about him a lot too. With all his tricks of skipping class and not coming home for days at a time, it's hard for her to keep up. But i think she does a pretty good job. She has learned to catch him at his tricks before he gets away with them, and if she's too late she tries to be mad at him...though sometimes all she can do is laugh.

Becky Thatcher is the new girl in town. She's shy (like all new girls seem to be) nice, and innocent. This mix gained her a few friends quickly, and an admirer almost instantaneously. That admirer was the one and only Tom Sawyer. At first, Becky was modest and gave no special attention to Tom. Tom finally go t a little piece of her heart when he taught her how to draw and convinced her to marry him. This was fine with Becky until she found out about Amy Lawrence. Her little heart seemed to break, and in her mind she refused to ever forgive him. But when Tom runs away, she worries the worries of a little girl in love.

Joe Harper is one of those boys who tries to be nasty... he really does. But no matter what he does, his conscience always worked its way into his mind. He's such a nice boy at heart that even if he hangs out with Huck Finn he'll still be a little mamma's boy.

One-Drop of Alcohol

     It was one of those dark nights where you can’t see your hand in front of your face. The little light there was came from a flickering lamp post and a small circle of light bobbing up and down in the distance. This bobbing light belonged to a flashlight, and this flashlight belonged to a woman with a slightly rounded stomach. She was not the type of person you would expect to see walking alone in the ghetto of New York, with her Chanel perfume leaving a strong trail behind her. But there she was, unknowingly breathing what could be one of the few breaths she had left.
     This woman was Susie Lindale. Lately she had been having an affair with a man she had met at a bar, and was now suffering the consequences. As the suitcase she towed and the tear stained face that looked down in shame showed, she had lost more than just the respect of the people she loved, she had lost the people themselves. She had become pregnant with the man she cheated on her husband with, and after her husband found out, there was no hesitation. Ten minutes later, she was on the doorstep of a house no longer hers to share, waiting for a taxi to come and take her away.
     It was a long ride to New York, where the house of her lover was situated, and now that she was actually in New York she wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. His house was the last place that she might be accepted. Her family had abandoned her and refused to house her just like her “friends” had, and after this she was not sure where she could go. These thoughts rambled on inside her head, making the dark seem even more dismal than it had before. Finally, she found the apartment she had been to many times during nights like these. But as she crossed the driveway next door to it, a light (brighter than the stars it seemed) blinded her into a daze. The squeal of tires reached her ears just as the car reached her body. The crunching of her bones seemed to belong to someone else, her head smacking against the pavement seemed like a dream. Then she lay motionless on the pavement, just a darker blob in the already dark night
     The guilt drenched me like water, sinking into my every pore. The woman did not deserve to die, I thought as I kneeled down next to the misshapen figure on the asphalt. Try as I might, the tears would not stop flowing down my face, tears filled with shame and misfortune. That one drop of alcohol started it all. That one drop of alcohol lost me my girlfriend, my home, my family, and almost lost this woman her life. I always thought I was the only one that could be hurt by this liquid from hell, but I was wrong. This one drop of alcohol ended the life I had, and all I could do was hope that I could start a new one.
     During all this self-analysis I had managed to pick up the woman (who was surprisingly heavy) and carry her into my house. Laying her down gently onto my couch, I started to think about what I was going to do with her. I had to get her to a hospital, there was no doubt about that, but how could I do that with out getting arrested for running her over? That’s when I realized why she had been so heavy. Her stomach was uncommonly big for someone with such a small build. She was pregnant. A new wave of dread washed over my body, I cannot forgive myself if I killed that baby and it's mom. Panic was then the only thing I could feel. But through that panic a decision surfaced. I made the decision to take her to the hospital, even if I never get to see if she lives or dies. The panic disappeared, only to be replaced by the cool feeling of decision, my mind was clear of everything but this plan. I had no time to loose.
     Again I carried this woman, going back the way I had just come, to the car that might have caused her death. After situating her (seat belt on) in the passenger seat, I walked around the front of the car to sit behind the driver’s wheel and turned the key in the ignition. The car came alive with a slight growl that quickly turned to a barely audible humming, and I could feel the pulsations of the engine underneath me. I pressed my foot down on the pedal and we jerked forward. Going a tad bit over the speed limit, 50mph in a 30mph zone, I got her to the ER in a few minutes. After that the medics took over, having a few men grab her legs, back and head so nothing would be moved unnecessarily. Then they softly put her onto one of those stretchers on wheels as if she weighed nothing at all. I briefly wondered if I was ever going to see her again.
     Just then a large man wearing a long white trench coat that covered his broad shoulders and chocolate colored skin walked up to me and asked if I could answer a few questions he had. I answered with a nod, and he beckoned me to follow him. Down a maze of hallways we went, with him explaining what type of ailment each hallway held the whole time. It wasn’t the best time for a tour in my opinion.
     "This is the hallway where our most serious burn victims are kept." He said, pointing to the hallway on the right, "and this is the hallway where people with broken bones rest and get casts put on and the like." He stated, pointing to the opposite hallway of the burn victims.
     He continued on, showing the hallways where people healing from surgeries or in the process of getting a surgery wait and rest. There were too many hallways to remember, and I started to get bored real fast. But, to be polite, I would occasionally make a comment like "That makes sense" or the commonly used "Hmm" and "Ok."
     Eventually, I started to actually notice all the rooms he was continually talking about, and I knew we must be going to his office. The hospital rooms had begun to change from ones that held beds and medical instruments to ones with desks and chairs, and an occasional bookshelf (filled with books) on the side against a wall. While I was noticing these things I also noticed that the doctor was periodically staring at me, as if to measure what type a man I was. I knew what he saw. He saw a man with messed up brown hair that went down to just below his ears. Bangs that covered hazel eyes, and thick eyebrows that made him look as though he was always brooding over something. He saw a chin that hadn’t been shaved for a week or more, and wrinkled clothing that looked like it had been slept in many times in a row. He probably will guess that they actually had been slept in, and he would be right. He also might be noticing the worn out knees on the jeans the man wore, or the tears that covered his jacket around where the seam is. Maybe he sees the holes in the soles of the man's now gray sneakers, and the frayed ends of his also gray shoelaces. Whatever he does or does not notice, he’ll come up with the same conclusion…a drunk with a ruined life, and he’d be right.
     But when we finally arrived at his office, it surprised me with its plainness. The walls were white, and the furniture (two hard backed chairs, a desk, and a book shelf that covered half of the left wall) was a non-original color of dark brown. The only things that were on the wall was a doctorate degree in something that was framed and hung on the wall behind the desk. The man went and sat in a chair behind the desk and, after introducing himself as Dr. Lloyd, began his questions.
     “This women you brought in, what is your relationship to her? Are you family?” He asked me in his deep baritone voice and eyes searching, like if he looked hard enough, he might be able to see right through the lies I might give.
     "No, I'm not. She got hurt because of me, and I wanted to make sure that she was all right." This wasn’t exactly the smartest thing to say, but I didn’t have very many choices at the time. His staring was making me uncomfortable and I couldn’t think of a lie. I bet he practiced that look in a mirror
     "Mhmm." He said in his professional doctor voice, taking a note on a small white packet of paper, "And how did you hurt her?"
     Now I got a good idea. Just because I knew about the crash, doesn’t mean I had to be in it….
     "Well, I couldn't get to her before the car came. It was so fast and I was so slow and I just… I just couldn’t get there in time." I said, letting my voice crack a little and letting a single tear slide down my face.
     I think he believed me because he went on to say he was sorry and it wasn’t my fault and all those other things people say because they don’t know what else to do. The whole thing went on for another five minutes, and all of those painstaking minutes I kept my "I'm broken hearted" look on and just played along. When he was done, we both stood up from our chairs and shook hands. I turned to leave right as he gave me a look that made me know that he had figured out I was lying, but he still let me walk out that door to the woman I could have killed.
     I found the room the woman was in from a kind old nurse who I had stopped as she walked by. As I walked into the room, I saw that she was hooked up to many different machines, and I had no clue as to what any of them did. Another thing I noticed was how quiet it was. The woman was still unconscious, though she had some color to her cheeks now, so she wasn’t making any sound. The only other person in there was a nurse who was checking one of machines hooked up to the woman. This nurse would be the only person in the world to witness the change on my face as I looked at this helpless woman lying on the bed in front of me. This nurse would be the only one to see my face change from one of a bystander to one who cared. This nurse would be the only one to witness the first moment I fell in love with this woman. I didn’t know her name, I only met her because I ran her over, but I am sure this was not guilt that changed my feelings. It was her, with her angel face laying against a pillow, oblivious to this whole change that was happening to me. She was my future, my new future, my future without alcohol. And believe me, it looked good.