Literature Central: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapters 18-22

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapters 18-22
Chapters 18-21 begin in the village. Everyone is sad and miserable over the loss of the boys. Becky feels terrible for her attitude towards Tom, and misses him. The local boys talk about them, and give honors to the ones to speak to them.
Sunday finally comes, and everyone gathers in the church for the funeral. The minister gives a moving sermon which makes the boys seem wonderful. Everyone is so moved, and already so sad, they all start crying. Even the minister begins to cry!
Then the boys enter the church, and wait in the back until they were discovered. They had come close to the village last night, slept in the nearby woods, and then snuck (sp?) into the church, and slept in the gallery, which is never used. They listened to their own funeral before coming out.
There is much shock and joy at the discovery of them. A song is sung by everybody, and in a wonderful way. Back home, Tom gets a lot of love and punishment from Aunt Polly, but he can't tell which is the one showing the most love or gratitude.
The next day, everyone treats Tom kindly at breakfast. Aunt Polly makes Tom feel guilty by saying he didn't care for her by not even thinking of leaving a note. Tom tricks her, and says he had a dream the night he actually sneaked into her house. He tells her all the details, and makes her believe he had a vision. Aunt Polly is giddy, and goes to share with her friend, who is Joe's mom, while the kids head to school.
Tom gets a lot of glory. He acts like he doesn't care, but he loves the attention he's getting from everyone. He decides that he doesn't need Becky, but only glory.
He ignores Becky, and starts hanging with Amy Lawrence again. This begins a mini-"war" between Becky and Tom. Becky then ignores Tom, and hangs out with a boy named Albert (which I believe is the new boy introduced to us at the beginning of the book).
Tom feels jealous and angry. He retreats during noon for home. When Becky realizes that she doesn't have an audience, she dumps Albert, and leaves. Albert realizes he has been used, and decides to get even with Tom Sawyer. He sabotages Tom's spelling-book, and leaves. Becky witnesses this, but decides that she wants Tom to get punished as well. She keeps silent.
When Tom gets home, Aunt Polly is there and mad. She has learned from Joe's mom, who learned from Joe, that Tom had been there that night, and there had been no dream. Tom finally admits the truth, even admitting that he had been planning to leave a note to let her know that they were alive, and had just gone off to do pirate stuff.
Aunt Polly doesn't believe at first, but eventually lets Tom go. She then grabs his jacket which he had taken with him. She goes back and forth on deciding to look in it, not wanting to find out it was a lie. She eventually does, and finds the bark piece that had the note. She is very happy.
At school, Becky finds a chance to look at a mystery book that the school-master, Mr. Dobbins, keeps under heavy guard. This is a special opportunity, since every schoolchild wants to see that mystery book. Mr. Dobbins only reads it during certain times, and keeps it locked up otherwise.
Becky opens the drawer which happens to have the key in it this time. She looks through the book until she discovers a well-done picture of a human. To explain this picture, this book was an anatomy book. Mr. Dobbins had wanted to be a doctor, but being-poor issues made him only a school-master.
Tom walks in on her while she's looking at this picture. In her hurry to close the book, Becky rips half of the picture-page. She manages to get it into the drawer, but she's in big trouble. Like, get-whipped trouble! There's a mini-fight, and Becky runs off.
Tom, who was angry with Becky's behavior, decides at first to let her get whipped. But when he discovers his ruined book, he has troubles of his own. No one helps him, and he gets whipped. But he doesn't overly mind... he thinks he may have done it without thinking when he was playing. His denial was him only doing how things were done, and principle is what kept him from going back on his denial.
But the issue of the ripped page stood. Everyone notices Mr. Dobbins getting his book. Tom suddenly wants to save Becky, but can't think of something. He suddenly thinks of grabbing the book and running for it, but he hesitates... and then it's too late.
Mr. Dobbins goes on a warpath. His anger is so great, even the innocent are terrified! He asks the public in general who done it, and then starts asking individuals.
Tom knows that Becky is doomed. Whenever Mr. Dobbins does this, he finds the guilty party, no matter what. Tom wishes he can do something, but knows it's too late.
Suddenly, when Mr. Dobbins is asking Becky if she had done it, Tom gets an idea. He jumps up, and claims to have done the damage himself! Mr. Dobbins whips Tom, and makes him stay extra time at school.
Tom doesn't mind... he knows Becky will be waiting. Becky tells him everything that had happened. Tom begins to plan revenge against Albert, but he is happy to have Becky's eye once more.
Chapter 22 leaves Tom, and goes to more general matters. Vacation is coming, and Mr. Dobbins gets very mean and strict. A gathering called "'Examinations'" is coming, and Mr. Dobbins wants everything to be perfect. Unluckily, this means whippings and beatings for even small stuff. Only the ladies above 18 and big boys avoid these beatings, but it means that the boys who are small are treated terribly, and are kept afraid. These boys constantly try to get revenge, but Mr. Dobbins stays one step ahead. Finally, the boys go to the sign-painter's son for help with a master plan. The sign-painter's son hates Mr. Dobbins too, so he agrees.
Finally, the big gathering arrives. Everyone comes at eight o' clock that afternoon, and the ceremonies begin. First there are speeches and stuff from many people. There are two successful recitations before Tom comes up. He starts out fine, but then fails miserably. There are other school stuff.
And then there are the ladies' papers and stuff. All of them have sermons "pasted" on the end, which is an old tradition by this point. And a lot of subjects are the same as their parents' subjects had been a long time ago.
There are examples of a few. There is an excerpt from a boring one. One girl does a poem that's decent. And then there is a haunting paper, with a powerful sermon at the end which ends all hope for anyone not a Presbyterians. This one paper is the one which wins the first prize.
And then Mr. Dobbins begins drawing a picture of America to begin the geography class's portion of the gathering. He does a bad job, and does it over. Try #2 is not good either. Mr. Dobbins does it once more, and stays intent on the job, though he can hear the increasing muttering.
But he doesn't notice that a cat has been lowered above his head. The cat's head has been wrapped with a rag, so she can't meow. She is lowered by a string tied around her haunches. She tries to cut the string, and even claws empty air. But nothing helps her problem.
She is slowly lowered towards Mr. Dobbins's (sp?) head. She grabs and removes his wig, and then is brought up quickly. Light shines from Mr. Dobbins's (sp?) bald head. And it's not just because he's bald... the sign-painter's son gilded his head sometime earlier! Like anyone can expect, this breaks up the gathering.

I'm impressed with Mark Twain on something here. He put experts of papers in Chapter 22... that were not his own! He adds a note at the end of Chapter 22 that admits that he got the experts from a volume called Prose and Poetry by a Western Lady. I'm impressed that he readily admitted this.
However, I'm not sure on his reasoning of using these quotes. It was confusing in this matter. The only thing that I got was that these quotes were written in school-girl form. I think he then says that this makes them better than imagining it up, but I'm not entirely sure. He could have been more clear in that matter.
I can't believe Aunt Polly's wits here. It was obvious that Tom had sneaked into the house and eavesdropped, not that he had a dream! Even Sid could see that! Yet Aunt Polly needed someone to tell her that Tom had come into the house to see the obvious. And then, when Tom came home at noon, her eventually letting him go and forgiving him them didn't make sense. Why did she do that? There's not really a good reason, and it does not really seem to stick with her character. Aunt Polly is not a believable character all the time.
However, she can be believable sometimes. Her reaction when Tom came home at noon made sense. Her original disbelief at everything he said then made sense. And her reluctance to check his jacket's pockets--in case he had been telling her another lie--made sense as well. Aunt Polly is a character that could have been made better.
Then there's the mini-war. This shows nicely that kids can be mean, and don't always know what they want. But the scenes themselves were uncomfortable at times. And they didn't always make the greatest sense. And sometimes the reasoning didn't come right away--like why Tom was hanging with Amy Lawrence again--and made things confusing.
Mark Twain did better on the desires of the children. A lot of the desires in this area made a lot of sense, and were good reasons. However, there were desires in this area that did not make a lot of sense.
Tom is a confusing character. It stands out that he is very selfish, and basically lives on glory. That much was made clear after his return! Even Aunt Polly said that he was very selfish!
However, Tom sacrificed himself to save Becky. This was a very unselfish act. It seems pretty obvious that his crush and love were interfering, but this goes against his very-selfish nature. This makes things confusing, and me wondering what kind of character Tom really is.
In this respect, Mark Twain does a good job. Real people are pretty complicated. Mark Twain shows this clearly by his confusing character of Tom Sawyer.
Chapter 22 is my least favorite chapter in this book so far. Only a few parts were really enjoyable, and most of them were around the fact that Mr. Dobbins was being mean, and the whole revenge plan. There were a few other enjoyable parts, but they included Tom being a main character again (for a brief time), and the "prize winning speech". The poem, I think, was decent, and I did enjoy that part somewhat.
Mostly, however, that part of the book was boring. That area of the book was hard to get through, and had me tired of it for a good, long while. And the first speech mentioned was boring. The next two parts were at least decent (the prize-winning speech was better, but it's not my fave thing), but they didn't help much.
I wonder how shocked Mark Twain would be if he saw our modern schools. Religion was a bigger thing in schools back in the time he was writing in. He showed it had a big impact, especially since each girl's piece of writing had a sermon "glued" onto the end. He said he believed that the practice may never end... ho boy, was he sure wrong! It was probably a thought that seemed very much true in his time, but time's passage has changed things. Religious stuff like that isn't allowed anymore in our schools. It would probably be very shocking to Mark Twain, though it's a common fact of life today.