No More Woman!!

Gustavo Quintero
English 48B
January 24, 2007
Journal #9 Mark Twain


Quote:
"Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with woman, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers"(Twain 114).


Summary:
Tom Sawyer has discussed his intentions as his group of outlaw "men" is formed. Ben Rogers points out that holding all these people for ransom will take up space in their cave.

Response:
The funny Mark Twain strikes once again. Every time I read this quote it brings a smile to my face. I can imagine a group of preadolescence kids going over plots of robbing, killing and kidnapping. All in an attempt to live out their childhood fantasies of cops and robbers. The best part of this quote is that it reminds me of the little rascals. The little rascals had a secret hideout that they called,"The He-man woman haters club", where they would discuss various points in their agenda such as the local soap box derby race and assignments to certain positions within the group. I remember watching the movie and finding it how funny it was that these little kids were so disgusted by girls. If any of the other members such as Spanky or Buckwheat caught you even looking at a girl then a club meeting was immediately called into session. This kid like nostalgia is the theme that Twain is trying to create for his readers of "Huckleberry Finn".

Apart from the playful innocence of these kids there is also the scary realization of just how disturbing these kids imaginations were. Tom Sawyer talks about killing people and robbing them and marking there forehead with a cross so that the public knows who killed the person. Although I highly doubt they would do such a thing these thoughts are none the less a little disturbing. When I was a kid I can remember playing cops and robbers but It never even crossed my mind to even mention killing and robbing a person. After this said I do not think that the intention's of Twain was to showcase the violence that these kids could conjure up but rather show the playful innocence that is associated with these preadolescence kids.