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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Missouri Dialects:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer includes accurate Southern dialects, meaning that characters speak in different ways so as to capture their geographic location, class position, racial identity, and more. Twain’s attention to the different types of dialects is one of the reasons Tom Sawyer is considered a realist novel—he accurately represents how people in Missouri spoke at the time.
Twain showcases this talent in dialogue between the characters, where he creates unique contractions and uses slang in order to capture the different dialects. A simple conversation between Tom and Huck in Chapter 35 shows their different upbringings, for example:
“I can’t ketch a fly in there, I can’t chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a belt—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.”
“Well, everybody does that way, Huck.”
Because Huck is less educated than Tom, his language is more exaggerated (like “widder" instead of “widow” and “reg’lar” instead of “regular”). Tom’s language, on the other hand, is more accurate in terms of spelling, though he still has grammatical errors (like “everybody does that way” instead of “everybody does it that way”), showing that, as an average child growing up in a rural community, he does not speak formally either.
Twain also attempts to capture the specific dialect of enslaved people in Missouri at the time, as seen in the speech patterns of Jim. In Chapter 2, Jim rejects Tom’s attempts to make him whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence:
“Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an‘git dis water an’ not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec’ Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ‘long an’ ‘tend to my own business—she ’lowed she’d ‘tend to de whitewashin’.”
Jim’s dialect is much more extreme than Tom or Huck’s—“and get” becomes “an’git,” “going to ask” becomes “gwine to ax,” etc. This is because Twain wanted the novel to capture each character's language and societal positioning as realistically as possible.
Related Themes:
Chapter 35
Explanation and Analysis—Missouri Dialects:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer includes accurate Southern dialects, meaning that characters speak in different ways so as to capture their geographic location, class position, racial identity, and more. Twain’s attention to the different types of dialects is one of the reasons Tom Sawyer is considered a realist novel—he accurately represents how people in Missouri spoke at the time.
Twain showcases this talent in dialogue between the characters, where he creates unique contractions and uses slang in order to capture the different dialects. A simple conversation between Tom and Huck in Chapter 35 shows their different upbringings, for example:
“I can’t ketch a fly in there, I can’t chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a belt—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.”
“Well, everybody does that way, Huck.”
Because Huck is less educated than Tom, his language is more exaggerated (like “widder" instead of “widow” and “reg’lar” instead of “regular”). Tom’s language, on the other hand, is more accurate in terms of spelling, though he still has grammatical errors (like “everybody does that way” instead of “everybody does it that way”), showing that, as an average child growing up in a rural community, he does not speak formally either.
Twain also attempts to capture the specific dialect of enslaved people in Missouri at the time, as seen in the speech patterns of Jim. In Chapter 2, Jim rejects Tom’s attempts to make him whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence:
“Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an‘git dis water an’ not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec’ Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ‘long an’ ‘tend to my own business—she ’lowed she’d ‘tend to de whitewashin’.”
Jim’s dialect is much more extreme than Tom or Huck’s—“and get” becomes “an’git,” “going to ask” becomes “gwine to ax,” etc. This is because Twain wanted the novel to capture each character's language and societal positioning as realistically as possible.
Related Themes:
