Literature Cental: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapters 5-8

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapters 5-8
Chapter 5 continues the story in church. After Sunday School, the bell rings, and everyone gathers for the morning sermon. Polly joins the kids, and they sit together. Tom is put at the end of the pew so he won't be distracted by the summer scene outside the window.
The minister does notices, and then a long prayer. Tom barely listens, but manages to note the changes and hate the change in total routine. A fly cleaning and preening itself on the pew in front of Tom bothers him, but Tom can't move, because he believes his soul will be destroyed if he catches the fly or moves in mid-prayer. When the prayer finally ends, Tom catches the fly, but Polly makes him release it.
The sermon itself is long and boring, and is about an old topic, though it's of terrible things. Only one scene catches Tom's interest, of the nations looking on a lamb and lion together, and a boy leading them. Of course, Tom wants to be that boy.
The rest of the sermon, however, even has the rest of the congregation bored and tired. Tom remembers he has a beetle with some impressive jaws, and takes it out. But the beetle pinches him, and the resulting "toss" from natural reaction sends the bug flying. It lands on his back, can't move, and Tom can't leave the pew to get it back.
A poodle notices the beetle, and begins having some fun with it, since it's bored too. The beetle pinches the poodle, goes flying once more from a natural-reaction "toss", and lands again on its back. The poodle goes after it with careful vengeance, and then goes after other stuff, forgetting the beetle. Then it promptly sits on the beetle, and begins flying itself all over the church.
By now, a good amount of people are watching and enjoying the distraction. When the poodle finally jumps onto its master's lap, and the said master gets it out via the window, the sermon loses its touch. Everyone is trying to hold in laughter, and a loose chuckle makes it sound like the minister said something funny. Eventually, everyone leaves. Tom doesn't mind that the poodle has played with the beetle, but he doesn't care for the poodle taking his beetle away.
Chapter 6 begins when Tom wakes up Monday. He tries to get out of school by faking sickness and pain. And he even tries to use his loose tooth to his advantage, but Polly is having none of it... the tooth is pulled out, and Tom ends up going to school. However, he ends up coming to school a "hero" of sorts, and the last person with attention because of a finger that was cut ends up being cast out.
We meet Huckleberry Finn, son of the local drunk. He's everything a boy can dream of... free with no rules at all, doesn't have to go to school, and is pretty wild. Since he's forbidden to play with Huckleberry, Tom plays with him as often as possible.
Huckleberry has a dead cat at the moment, and the duo end up talking about "cures" (more like spells) for warts with different stuff, including one with the dead cat. The duo decided to meet up to test the cat "cure" (which includes going into a graveyard, and listening to demons talk to a dead man), and agree on a signal, meowing. It didn't work last time, since Polly had her eye on Tom, but Tom promises to let loose the signal this time.
After the meeting is agreed upon, Tom then makes a trade with Huckleberry. Tom gives Huckleberry his tooth, and gets a tick in return. Both really like their new objects when they part ways.
And then we get to school. The headmaster notices Tom was late (though it doesn't seem like it at first), and demands an answer. Tom notices an empty spot next to his new crush on the girl's side of the school, and answers with the truth. Since Huckleberry is generally not liked at all by the adults, this helps get Tom punished. After being beaten, he's sent to the girl's side... right next to his crush!
Tom and the crush, who we learn is named Becky Thatcher, have some interactions. Tom shows her drawings, and agrees to help her learn to draw. Then he admits to loving her by writing his tablet. Becky pretends to be insulted, but was blushing and looked pleased the whole time.
Then the headmaster makes Tom move back to the other side, causing people to giggle. Tom tries to study, but is heavily distracted. He just makes messes of things.
Chapter 7 continues on where Chapter 6 left off. Tom eventually becomes so bored and ideas begin to wander so much, he gives up studying. He remembers the tick he got, and takes it out. He begins to route the bug around with a pin.
He's sitting next to his best friend, and Saturday-battle-enemy, Joe Harper. Joe is as bored as Tom is, and soon begins to play with the bug with his own pin. Soon Tom says that they're getting in each other's way, and draws a line down his board. When the bug was on one boy's side, the boy could play with it without interference from his friend. But when it got to the other boy's side, that boy could play without interference from the other one. This is fun for a while, but Joe soon eventually keeps it on his side, and Tom interfers with his pin. A fight, luckily only in words, ensues. The headmaster jumps in at this point, after having watched for a bit, and thwacks the boys. Dust flies for about two minutes.
Lunch eventually comes. Most of the folks head home, but Tom and Becky leave their groups and comes back to the school (Tom gave Becky instructions how). They do art lessons for a while, and then start doing other things.
Tom explains "engagement", meaning loving only each other and no one else, marrying only their partner, inviting each other to parties, and kissing each other. Tom gets Becky to say she loves him, and then they chase each other around. Then they kiss, and make an "engagement".
But then Tom lets it slip that he loved another girl before, Amy Lawrence. Becky gets upset and cries, thinking the other duo were "engaged" and that Tom still has feelings for Amy. Tom tries to make things right and make it known that he loves only her now, but no luck. He even tries to give her his special object, and she slaps it down to the floor.
Then Tom leaves, and he's not coming back. Becky eventually comes out, tries to find him, and even tries calling for him. But he's nowhere. The students are coming back by now. Becky is sad, lonely, and has no one to share her feelings with.
Chapter 8 comes back to Tom. He lane-hops until he can avoid the other students. Then he goes deep into the woods, and begins to think. He thinks life's one big trouble, and the dead lucky that they can sleep and dream all the day long, without life bothering them. He wishes he could be dead... if he had a clean Sunday-School plate.
He eventually begins to think of other things. He wonders about his careers, though all involve running away and coming back a hero or well-known. He eventually decides on being a pirate, and decides to start the next day. He knows he has to prepare today.
He then digs up a special box, and gets a marble after saying an incantation. But he is disappointed... he had buried the marble 2 weeks or so ago, and made different incantations. When he said the incantation he had just said, he was supposed to have all of his lost marbles, even the ones super-widely-spread. He is upset, and tosses the marble away. But, instead of deciding the obvious of "that doesn't work", he decides a witch interfered. He even gets a "bug" to "admit" by "not telling" (after saying an incantation, of course).
Then he works on finding the marble he tossed away. He then uses his smarts after just blindly searching, and tosses another marble. He stands in the same spot he was in when he tossed the first one, and tosses the new marble the same way. It takes three tries, but he eventually finds his marble.
And then Joe Harper sounds a tin trumpet, and the two begin to play Robin Hood... after undressing a good deal (including their pants!!!). They try to stay super-loyal to the book, and even have a fight because Joe doesn't want to "die" when he's supposed to. But they take turns, and make sure the fun's all around and evenly shared, until Robin Hood dies... and Tom (who's Robin Hood) ends up on a nettle and jumps up, which is too gaily for a corpse to do!
Then the boys dress, and head back. They discuss that there's no more criminals anymore, and don't care for it. They both say they'd rather spend a year as criminals in Sherwood Forest than to forever be the USA's President.

The last tibbit was cute. It's amazing to think that, when one is little, a bad-guy life can seem better than a good guy's. In their minds, it means more adventure and action, which seems better than sitting behind a desk all day and doing nothing, even if that job is supposedly important. It was cool for Mark Twain to add that nice piece of data, and in the right mind.
And Mark Twain points another common motif as well for youth. Basically, "if it's forbidden, it is done as often as possible"! I'm talking about the relationship between Huckleberry and Tom, of course. Since it was forbidden, Tom played with Huckleberry as often as possible. This only proved what I said above. While it is not true for all kids, it is true often enough, even in the modern world.
And the job changes! All kept a similar theme of "running away and then coming back and showing them years later". All were done while Tom was grumpy. That was a well-done scene. And all being done after Tom had decided not to be a clown, like he had told Becky. And it showed that all these job decisions were influenced heavily by feelings.
In these respects, Mark Twain does a good job showing a child's mind. They are pretty common facts at times. And a bunch of these are modern issues and tibbits! And Mark Twain manages to do a good show showing these to us, even if the main characters don't always realize it.
Stuff in a kid's mind wasn't the only thing Mark Twain showed that is still a modern issue. The boring sermon is another. Some sermons today are boring, and done in monotones. Sermons shouldn't be boring or done in a monotone! You lose your audience, and no one listens. And when something else comes along, people pay more attention to that when they should be listening to your sermon! And sometimes that same something else messes up your sermon and/or how your sermon is taken.
Kids apparently were very superstious (sp?) in those days. There was talk of incantations, demons, witches, and "cures" which were really more like spells! And there were weird little beliefs, like the bug-telling-answers-and-when-it-didn't-it-was-because-a-witch-had-been-around motif. And the soul-being-destroyed-because-of-movement-during-prayer (or catching a bug during prayer) was not a good belief, and seemed silly to me.
Mark Twain may have been a wonder, but his book still needs some work. There were things I was unsure on. The whole "Tom couldn't move during prayer" instance, for example. I'm still not sure if the problem was moving during prayer, or doing actions like catching bugs during prayer. I thought the former at first, but then Tom began to move near the end of the prayer, which got me wondering.
And there were some character surprises. Tom was actually trying to study! That caught me off-guard. Tom is such a bad boy, and he was trying to do something good that was not crush-related. I did not get that, and wish that a reason had shown for this unexpected act. At the very least, Mark Twain should have done that!
However, there were very-well-done parts! The whole scene between the dog and the beetle, for example. I feel like that was a very well-done scene. It kept my attention, was highly enjoyable, and Mark Twain did a good job explaining what the dog was doing. There were other good and very-good scenes, but that scene was a super one and one of my favorites.