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82nd book of 2020.

This is a great story that took me, particularly their time on the island as ‘pirates��, back to my days in the Sea Scouts. Every year, save a few where we went elsewhere, we camped in Marlowe, right on the bank of the river Thames. We slept in tents, went sailing on calm river mornings, looked at the mansions that flanked the water and dreamt up imaginary lives for ourselves, living in them with beautiful wives, long shadows from the trees lay across the still water, we had campfires, we lined each other’s tents with alcohol gel and set it alight for a ring of fire, we tied each other to trees, we played takedown bulldog, we used rope to heave one another’s kayak up a tree, we pushed each other in the lake, we got bored washing up and slapped each other with soapy hands, we ate jam on bread all day, we swam in the freezing cold water, we whipped each other with towels, we wrestled, we shouted, we punched and kicked, we helped one another when someone capsized their boat, we told ghost stories, we played manhunt at night, we lay on our backs and looked at the blue skies, we took each other’s washing off the line and threw it in the river or up on branches, we got homesick, too, we comforted each other, we cried sometimes, we missed our parents, but we also had ultimate freedom for a week, we could swear, we could stay up late, we could spit in the water, we could lick our plates, we could eat breakfast with our feet in the water, we could sunbathe with no homework, we could, above all, relish in the fact that we were all young and free, and happy.

I’m surprised to see so many poor reviews of this. A lecturer of mine once said, “People don’t like Tom Sawyer because it isn’t Huckleberry Finn,�� and that may be so. I’ve seen people say it’s written for children, but the issue is this: it is complicated or boring for children, and not interesting enough for adults. I don’t know about the former, but I disagree with the latter.

And in fact, there is one paragraph that perfectly matches an observation I myself have had, and I myself have even written about. I realised that no matter what boisterous boy behaviour occurred on camp, there were times that nature prevailed over us. I won’t describe every memory, but several stand out, to illustrate my point, and then Twain’s observation too. At times, normally on the water, we were quiet. The river had the power, where all adults failed, to subdue us. Even the most wild Scouts were still, melancholic even, under the river’s trance. The same happened at night sometimes, in woods, where the trees that stood around us lulled us to thoughtfulness. I have profound (I believe them to be very profound moments in my life) of looking at boys in these moments. One friend, who particularly enjoyed hitting us, and I once took a sailing boat out one morning, a little one. I lay on the front of the boat on my back and he sailed. The whole time I wondered when he was going to hit me, or else tip me off the boat, but he didn’t. And when I glanced over my shoulder, I caught him staring intently, sadly, at the water rippling and parting under the boat, lost in some deep and personal thought. For me, it was like I had seen a whole new side to his character, a whole deeper understanding of him. After that, we became very close friends, we still talk, infrequently, today. So, it swelled my heart, and moved me, to read these few lines from Twain:

The stillness, the solemnity, that brooded in the woods, and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits of the boys. They fell to thinking. A sort of undefined longing crept upon them. This took dim shape presently �� it was budding home-sickness.

And apart from this beautiful moment in the book, the rest is enjoyable and humorous �� Tom, Huckleberry and Joe have a great adventure together, being pirates, gate-crashing their own funeral and playing Robin Hood. These entertaining moments do not distract from the melancholic ones though, the stillness of the boys and their inevitable climb towards adulthood, like us, never to return again to those years of childhood wonder and freedom, like how I will never again experience being twelve years old on camp again, which saddens me.