Also Read
SUMMARY
The next morning, during breakfast, Aunt Sally discovers that Uncle Silas's shirt is missing. She is livid at her husband for being careless. She has also realized that a spoon and six candles are missing. To make matters worse, a maid comes and tells her that the sheet, which was on the clothesline, is also gone. And so is the brass candlestick. Aunt Silas is mad with fury. Just when everybody is stupefied with the mystery of the misplaced articles, Uncle Silas fishes out a spoon from his pocket. He is equally dazed and can't explain anything.
When Aunt Silas is counting her spoons, Tom secretly takes away and puts in spoons, alternately. This leads to a different number of spoons, each time that the lady counts them. After a series of attempts at counting, the old lady gets flustered enough to give up. The boys can, then, take away one spoon for Jim. The same exercise of "mixed-up counting" is repeated with the sheet before it is pinched. Then they get down to baking the pie, in which they intend to hide the sheet for the rope-ladder. It is a difficult job and takes them a good lot of time and effort before they are able to finish it. The pie, containing the rope ladder, is finally ready to be delivered to Jim in his cabin.
 |
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 37 |
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Though Tom subjects everybody, including the old Uncle and Aunt Silas, to a lot of trouble and anxiety, he has a strong sense of morality. He understands that one good deed deserves to be reciprocated with another. Uncle Silas has, though unknowingly, taken the onus of the stolen things upon himself. In order to reciprocate his kindness, Tom goes to the cellar and closes the rat holes "tight and good, and shipshape". After all, as Huck says, Tom has always been "Full of principle" (Chapter 36). Huck's remark for Tom reveals the former's respect for the latter.
Tom displays his "morality" on another occasion. In Chapter 36, when he concedes that it is not practical to continue work with case-knives, he justifies his action by giving Huck a long lecture on morality. Though the latter "don't care shucks for the morality of it", for Tom, "right is right, and wrong is wrong".
It is an interesting observation that, while Tom is still the same juvenile adolescent that we have known since the beginning of the novel, Huck has matured considerably. The hardships of life and his ordeal with "society" have been instrumental in ripening his view of the world. While Tom is caught up within the ambience of prison stories and boyish novels, Huck has grown, not only emotionally but also spiritually.