Tom's Innocence

"Ring! Ring!" You pick up the phone and your son is on the other line, begging to go to a movie with his friends. You sigh as you tell him, yes. You remember, then, how he is maturing into a man. You remember how he used to hold onto your hand never wanting to let go. Or when he was afraid of even stepping out of his house. Now you remember that he is moving from innocence to experience something that Tom Sawyer, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, could never understand. Tom doesn’t want to grow up; he wants to roam the streets, causing trouble where ever he is, but every child has to grow up. Every child makes the journey from innocence to experience, whether they want to or not.

Becoming pirates or robbers runs through Tom Sawyer’s mind. His innocent mind shows the fun of becoming someone like them. When Tom will become more experienced he will see that these jobs involve many cruel, harsh things like stealing, killing, and turning true happiness away. Tom is not at that point yet so all he sees through his innocent eyes is fun and games. Tom’s innocence leads him to the wrong place at the wrong time. Huck and Tom think that by swinging a dead cat over their heads in a graveyard at midnight will cure warts. This leads them to becoming witnesses to a murder. Tom and Huck then realize that the world isn’t just fun and games.

Even though life isn’t full of games, Tom’s mind thinks it is. Many young children think a lot like Tom. When a child is innocent they think that they can always play games and never have to work. Adults are more experienced than children but in their minds they have not fully become experienced, and that leads them to wishing sometimes that they didn’t have to work and that money could grow on trees. Children don’t think about their future, thinking that their parents will do it for them. As children grow up they start to understand that their choices decide their future.

Though the journey from innocence to experience is long, many things help the journey seem to go quicker. During school, sports, holidays help us be ourselves and not care about how much we’re not experienced and show our innocence through many ways. Playing crazy games, making silly pranks shows our innocence is like any other child’s. Everyone may be different but the journey from innocence to experience is something everyone has to go through no matter how you look, act, and try to get away from it.