KidLit Forum

Tom and the prince are similar characters not only in their appearance, but also in their innate goodness, innocence and sense of justice.
Even if Mark Twain shows more sympathy towards Tom’s character, he also emphasizes both boys’ capacity to develop as human beings.
Tom’s wish comes true and he has to face „the horrible miseries of princedom up to the moment of crowning”, according to Mark Twain’s journal entry for November 23, 1877. Nevertheless, he has the ” equipment” for the life of a prince and, despite all his fears, shows great skills as a ruler.

In chapter XXX, ” Tom’s progress”, he begins to enjoy his royal life, blinded by the power and wealth he is experiencing:
”....royalty was just beginning to have a bright side for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day: in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and delightfulness. He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his four hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears....”

He stops thinking about the prince:
”...Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and happy restoration to his native rights and splendours. But as time wore on, and the prince did not come, Tom’s mind became more and more occupied with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome spectre, for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed...”

Tom’s ”progress” turns into a ”regress” in his human feelings of love and compassion for his own family:
”...Tom’s poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind. At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums, made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost wholly. And he was content, even glad: for, whenever their mournful and accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more despicable than the worms that crawl...”