Tom Sawyer Chapters 5-8

· The town of St. Petersburg is small, poor, and quiet; the church, with its cracked church bell that resounds through the town, becomes a quintessential symbol of small-town life.
· The antics between Tom, the dog, and the beetle provide comic relief to the church. What is most important, however, is the fact that the attendees pay more attention to the antics of the pinch-bug than they do to the speech given from the pulpit.
· This dichotomy between the serious and the playful - the moral and the mischievous - parallels Tom's constant struggle between his need for adventure and his will to "be good.
· Huck's different standard of living is exemplified by the way in which he and Tom discuss their various rituals and superstitions. Both Tom and Huck are believers of the mysterious. They believe in witches' spells, bad luck, and try to cure everyday ailments ­ like warts ­ by performing strange incantations. No matter how far-fetched their ideas sound, Tom and Huck discuss their secret rituals and chants with the utmost seriousness.
· The antics of Tom, Joe, and the tick during their study time at school depict how useless Tom thinks education to be.
· Robin Hood's gallantry appeals to Tom's sense of the romantic: Robin Hood is loved by all, and hated by only the people he steals from. His desire to be like Robin Hood stems from his need to be the center-of-attention. We also see that Tom's aspiration is not to cause mischief, but to be a "noble" figure like Robin Hood. But in actuality, the only way Tom can again attention is to misbehave.