Scott, Kevin Michael '''There's More Honor': Reinterpreting Tom and the Evasion in Huckleberry Finn''

"Huck's skills of play are productive only when used for survival, while Tom is able to dedicate his play skills entirely to the purpose of adventures and self-gratification." (Scott par. 6)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/MeaganGemperlein/2009/10/self-gratification_or_survival.html

"The critical dislike of, or at least discomfort with, the ending is largely caused by the re-entrance of Tom onto the stage and the havoc that ensues" (Scott 188)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JamieGrace/2009/10/is_e_really_that_bad.html

"Even Richard Hill, the most enthusiastic defender of the ending, moderates his description of Tom as "brilliant" and "brave" by adding that he "becomes drunk on romanticism and endangers Huck and Jim unnecessarily" (505)" (Scott 188).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KatieLantz/2009/11/tom_sawyer_brave_or_baloney.html

Tom can also be looked at as a role model.

"What the actual ending offers is a broader possibility, one that provides an alternative for the late-nineteenth-century reader who cannot make the moral leap Huck proposes." (Scott)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JeremyBarrick/2009/10/el_266.html

"By the time of the evasion, then, Tom does not see what others see. Others see a pick, Tom sees a case-knife. Others see a shed, Tom sees a dungeon. Others see a runaway slave, Tom sees an imprisoned nobleman."
~page 192

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JenniferPrex/2009/11/imagination_gone_wild.html

Tom's the bad boy, not Huck...

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/HeatherMourick/2009/11/everyone_has_their_own_world.html

"Unlike Huck's experience of play and of life in general, Tom's sort of life, what I will call the "boy-play world," could only exist within the society Twain is critiquing. Yet, describing Tom's play as self-gratifying should not suggest that it must necessarily work to a negative effect or function solely as critique."

"Tom's visions are, of course, youthful versions of the bad faith mechanisms adults use in his community every day. He does not actually see the case-knife, but he must act consistently as though he does in order to maintain the coherence of his boy-play world." (pg:4)

Tom lives in Lala Land

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GladysMares/2009/11/fun_and_games_for_tom.html

"Guided as he is by the rules, Tom sees no effective difference between Jim and other free men when it comes to the treatment he should receive from society" (199).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KaylaLesko/2009/11/im_a_jerk_to_everyone_equally.html

By the time of the evasion, then, Tom does not see what others see. Others see a pick, Tom sees a case-knife. Others see a shed, Tom sees a dungeon. Others see a runaway slave, Tom sees an imprisoned nobleman." (Scott 192)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JeredJohnston/2009/12/scott_theres_more_honor.html