Character Analysis
Tom probably isn't a guy you'd want to know in real life (well, unless you're someone who enjoys hanging out with thieves, murderers, and generally obnoxious people). But we do have to admit that he is one fascinating character to watch.
About that "Tom" Character. . .
Before we get rolling with our analysis of this bad boy, we've got a little bit of business to take care of. See, we just love how our wise old narrator steps in to clear up any confusion over who the name "Tom" refers to after Roxy switches the places of her son and her master's son. We love it so much, in fact, that at the risk of sounding like a broken record, we're going to repeat exactly what the narrator tells us:
This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir 'Chambers' and the usurping little slave 'Thomas á Becket'—shortening this latter name to 'Tom,' for daily use, as the people about him did. (4.1)
So, just like the narrator, when we talk about Tom, we're talking about Roxy's biological son whom everyone else thinks is Percy Driscoll's child. All clear on that?
Good, now we can get to the fun part.
Creating a Master (and a Monster)
It's almost shocking how bad Tom is, isn't it? This is a guy who A) robs his town blind B) sells his own mother down the river and C) kills his loving uncle. Not to mention that he's got a totally irritating, grating personality; think about all those scenes in which he tries as hard as he can to get on Pudd'nhead's last nerve by taunting him over his failed legal career.
Yet, appalling as his behavior is, Tom isn't just hanging around this story for shock value. No, sir. As a key part of the novel's broader critique of American slavery and assumptions about racial superiority, he's got a much more important role to play.
There's no doubt about it: Tom is the kind of character we love to hate. As this story reminds us, though, bad characters are often not born but made. The narrator tells us, for example:
Tom was a bad baby from the very beginning of his usurpation. (4.2)
Translation? Tom becomes a terror from the moment that Roxy decides to switch the kids and make it so that Tom assumes the privileged position of white child and mini slave master.
Tom's position makes him superior to Chambers, the slave, in every way…and he knows it.
We're told, for instance:
[Tom] was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and exasperating they might be…Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies, Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence, Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn't. Tom was 'fractious,' as Roxy called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile. (4.5)
Our narrator leaves little doubt that Tom's nasty temperament is a direct result of being spoiled to death and made to feel like he's way better than Chambers, the black kid. And if Tom's position of superiority weren't already clear, Percy Driscoll makes sure to spell it out:
[Percy Driscoll] told Chambers that under no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his little master. (4.7)
"Little master?" Whoa, this kid isn't even potty trained yet and he's calling all the shots.
But Tom eventually matures and realizes the error of his ways, right? Hahaha, not so much. If anything, Tom becomes more brutal as an adult, as we see in the following scene in which he punishes Chambers for interrupting him:
Tom had risen. The other young man was trembling now, visibly. He saw what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his left arm to shield it. Tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no word [. . .] He followed behind with one, two, three solid kicks. (8.36)
Ouch.
Tom shows that the institution of slavery and the sense of white racial superiority that went hand in hand with it weren't just bad for slaves. As his characterization suggests, slavery also had an insanely damaging effect on slaveholders themselves by turning them into immoral, inhumane people.
Not to call out Twain for being a copycat or anything, but this was an argument also made by some nineteenth-century abolitionists, or anti-slavery activists, such as Frederick Douglass. Rather than simply suggesting that slavery should end because blacks deserved equal rights, these activists tried a different tack by showing slaveholders how messed up slavery was making them.
Okay, so Tom's character shows us that the novel is critical of slavery. But big whoop, right? By the time Twain writes this novel in the late nineteenth century, slavery had already been abolished for decades. Was Twain in a coma all that time or something? Blacks had their freedom, everyone knew slavery had been a bad idea and all was hunky dory, wasn't it?
Not quite. As other readers and critics frequently point out, although slavery itself may have been ended by the time Twain published his novel, the late nineteenth century in the U.S., particularly in the south, was anything but a trouble-free era for race relations.
With widespread segregation laws following the end of the Civil War, a widespread sense of whites' superiority and blacks' inferiority was alive and well. On top of that, blacks who had the nerve to question their subordinate status during this time by doing things like opening a grocery store that would compete with white businesses faced the very real possibility of being lynched.
So, yeah, a message condemning a slave-holding society founded on the assumption that whites were superior to blacks was a message from which Twain's readers could still stand to benefit.
Well, what do you know? Tom has finally done some good!
Tom's Timeline