reading mark twain’s tom sawyer under a new light

7/31/2019 Reading Mark Twains Tom Sawyer Under a New Light

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Reading Mark Twains Tom Sawyer Under a New Light

Written by You-Sheng Li

The authors website: http://taoism21cen.com

(1) Introduction

In spite of vast differences between Western and Chinese cultural traditions, the history

of their fiction writing as a distinctive art went along similar evolutionary pathways. Paul

S. Ropp gives a detailed comparison of Western and Chinese fiction. [1] He says, As

fiction became more sophisticated and self-conscious in both cultures it also evolved

from an earlier tendency to endorse wholeheartedly the societys common values and

moved instead to a more ironic stance that questioned or criticized the dominant values of

the civilization The most strikingly are the parallels from the sixteenth through the

early nineteenth centuries when the novel in both cultures became increasingly

autobiographical and increasing serious in the exploration of social, moral, and

philosophical problems. The word autobiographical is understood as drawing directly

from the authors own experience, and his characters are usually real people he knew in

his life.

Mark Twains The Adventures of Tom Sawyerhas all those newly developed

characteristics: 1) autobiographical, 2) criticizing the dominant values of the civilization,

and 3) exploring psychological and philosophical dilemmas in our life with an ironic


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humorous tone. Furthermore, this novel created for the first time in literature a hero who

was a pariah or outcast and rebelled against the prevailing traditions.

Tom Sawyerdescribes family life in a village from a juvenile view. Villages, families,

and children are all relatively close to human nature or the primary society. It will be

interesting to compare this novel with similar Chinese novels and compare Twains town

with the town where I lived in the 1950s under the light of the primary and the secondary

society. Western society even in an isolated village was much more secondary while the

Chinese village as well as urban societies was more primary as a society.

History records what can be described in words, and only literature opens a window

allowing us to peep into the unspoken part of history, the psychological soul of man. The

creation and wide spread of a novel during a particular time tells what occupies the

collective conscious mind. The efforts of this essay thus form an essential part of putting

the history of Confucianism in a new perspective.

Western civilization originated in ancient Greece that developed under the influence of

Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. So was the American culture that branched

from Europe. In a way, the United States before the Civil War was more similar to

ancient Greece in slavery and cultural homogeneity than Europe. Both United States and

China are independent large countries while Europe is consisted of various nations of

different languages and culture. In conclusion, the comparison of Chinese with American


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instead European literature is well justified. This essay concentrates on Tom Sawyer but

also refers to its sequel, Huckleberry Fin, from time to time.

(1) Primary and Secondary Societies and Their Differences

The primary Society is genetically coded society, and it is based on our genetics.

Human nature and instinct are enough to keep a primary society harmonious and

functional. The primary society is the basic social organization of man immediately

above families. The ideal number of people in this primary society is believed to be

around 150. Bands and tribes are regarded as primary societies. Chiefdoms and states are

not .The culture of primary societies is close to basic human nature, and has no power to

modify human nature. Overextension of peripheral potentials of human nature is rarely

institutionalized in the primary society.

The secondary societyis man-made society. Since it is man-made, it has its

purpose, namely the ideology or the value system, and the social structure to support the

purpose. A secondary society is usually far larger than the primary society. The

introduction of social stratification and other institutions that are against human nature is

often necessary to keep a secondary society stable. The secondary society is created by

human culture, and therefore, it has limitless possibilities with different value systems,

and different directions while the primary society, dictated by human genetics, has only

one type.


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The definition of and the distinction between the primary society and the

secondary society can be refined by examining the way in which they are contrary to each

other: One was man-made, the other, hereditary. It is thus not difficult at all delineating

the major differences between the two by deduction from the definition with reference to

ancient tribal and modern societies.

Those differences include: 1) the former primary society is based on genetics, and

human nature and instinct are enough to keep it harmonious and functional while the

latter secondary society is man-made to serve its goal, and has an ideology or value

system with a social structure to support that goal. 2) Dictated by genetics, the former has

only one type while the latter has limitless possible types. Social stratification and

institutionalized violence such as police and army are often necessary to keep the latter

stable in its present type and restrain its members from seeking other types of society. As

a result, the former does not need a forceful authority while the latter does. 3) The former

is a psychological/emotional whole because of the subconscious social bond related to

face-to-face interaction while the latter relies on a uniform ideology and goal. The

religious culture is animism and remains part of the former society while the latter often

has organized religions with different belief systems. 4) Language is mainly for

psychological/emotional exchange and carries aesthetic value in the former while

language is mainly for communication or exchange of information, insights, opinion, and

so on in the latter. 5) Subjective consciousness is present in both but only the latter allows

its members to become men of their own making. 6) The philosophy of life or world view

is different: The former is able to view the physical world, the social world, and the inner

world of human minds from a relaxed mind while dictated by the social ideology; the


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latter has a focused view. In fact, war and competition forced people to focus on each

other. European visual artists created only human figures until the 17th and 18th centuries

when Holland and Britain developed paintings of scenery and landscape. (Chi 1983)

Navigation enabled them to escape from the grip of the continental military powers and

therefore gave them a relaxed mind to see more of the world.

Such a list can be easily extended.

Unlike other classifications of human societies that focus on cumulative gradual

changes other than human nature, the division of human societies into two levels,

genetically coded and man-made, focuses on the underlying transformation or a jump,

which fits well into the multi-level operation of the universe (Table 1). [Place Table 1

here]

Table 1. The Universal Evolutionary Pathways

Content 1. Physical

World

2. Life 2. Culture 4. Consciousness

Level 1 Non-being

Level 2 Being

Level 3 Elementary

particles

Level 4 Atoms and

electrons

Level 5 Molecules DNA

Level 6 Matters and Cells


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objects

Level 7 Stars and planets Tissues

Level 8 Galaxies Organs and limbs

Level 9 Universe Individuals

Level 10 Primary society Culture Subconscious or

aesthetic

Level 11 Secondary

society

Civilization Conscious: rational

thinking systems

and spirituality

There are impassable gaps between those levels in Table 1. In a way, tissues are

the primary society of cells and organs are the secondary society of cells. Normally, cells

cannot leave their tissues to reach the organ level. Although humans build secondary

societies, our history also suggests an impassable gap between the two levels of society.

(2) The American Town in Comparison with the Chinese Town

Twains hometown Hannibal started with a population of 30 and reached 2020 in 1830.

Twain was born in 1835 and lived there until he was a teenager. Therefore both the

author and his characters lived there as juveniles. Hannibal was beside a river and a

railway. My hometown was beside a river and a highway but thirty miles from a railway,

and had some 3000 residents in the 1950s. Thus Hannibal and my hometown were similar

and comparable. A rural lifestyle prevailed in both. In this discussion they represent the

American towns and the Chinese towns in general, so they are referred to as the

American or the Chinese Town respectively. No distinction is made between Hannibal

and Tom Sawyers village St. Petersburg.


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From Twains novel, we can see all its characters have different surnames unless they are

from the same family. In contrast, my hometown consisted of various areas or

neighbourhoods that were peopled by different clans. For example, my clan of 300

members had the same surname and lived in an area that has its own village name. Those

clans were essentially near or quasi-primary societies until the late 1950s. Members of

the same clan interacted with each other face-to-face on a daily basis. As there is no

forceful authority in a primary society, there were only occasional meetings of the whole

clan, at most once a year. To attend such a meeting, each family usually sent their

representative, an adult male or female or even a child. If all members were encouraged

to attend, the meeting had to provide free food and drink. The whole American Town was

motivated to search when both Tom and Becky went missing for days, and the whole

town awoke at midnight when the two juveniles were found. In the Chinese Town, such

initiatives were not undertaken by anyone beyond the clan or the primary society. There

was no general meeting for my hometown. People only got together for the sake of

private friendships and personal relationships. In the American Town, there was a weekly

Christian service for all members to attend. The basic society above families was the clan

in China but the small town in the West. Only Communists were able to change the

Chinese traditions.

The Chinese communists collectivised all peasants in 1956. My hometown formed a so-

called agricultural cooperation with more than a dozen teams. It literally meant that the

Communists were then able to motivate the whole town for a simple purpose like the


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American Town. It took a long time to accomplish this. To move peasants from their

primary societies up to the level of the secondary society where law or authority rules, it

needs a fundamental transformation. This transformation is so dramatic, and it is often

associated with violence and death. I still remember today that in late 1957 and early

1958, the whole town was ordered to dig a ditch, which was divided into many segments

for each team to work on. When I went to the site, I saw only children and women with a

single elderly male as the temporary leader. I did not work hard at all but I was hated and

criticized nonstop for working too hard. At noon, the whole town was ordered to a

gathering at a nearby graveyard. From a town of 3000, only two or three dozen attended

the meeting there to listen to a new leader, who was not a local but from far away, since

his job was to break the local clans into free individuals and make them obey authority.

To my knowledge it was the first meeting of the town. A peasant was dragged in with

both of his arms tied behind. This leader announced his crime as being lazy. He was

called the pariah to his face. Then the leader shouted a slogan, Down with this lazy

pariah! He then motivated all the participants to follow him. Only a few murmured

something I could not hear clearly. After this meeting, this lazy peasant was led by two

guards walking ten miles to reach the county prison. Corporal punishment was soon

introduced. My uncle was once so severely whipped that he broke out of the so-called

bull-shed or temporary prison and crawled to his home but was only able to move some

fifty meters in a whole night. He was dragged back when he was only half way home the

next day. My uncles crime was eating raw corn to relieve his hunger. Death did occur

after such beatings. It is not indeed an easy job to let those who used to live entirely in a

quasi-primary society to get used to a secondary society. Those overdone punishments


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were deemed necessary to teach the illiterate peasants some basic disciplines. A chaotic

countryside was eventually resulted, and it led to million deaths of starvation.

Instead of clans, the American Town had the concept of blood or race. Tom Sawyer has

many remarks that will be labelled as racism today. For example, it always a negative

tone when it comes to black people. For example, it says, niggers always lie. The only

antihero in this book was Injun Joe who killed five citizens from the village alone. This

Injun is a half-breed with Indian blood in his heredity. Before he committed murder, he

told his victim, The Injun blood aint in me for nothing. Since there was a UN-like

super state above, the conflicts among different clans went rarely beyond control. To my

knowledge, violent or prolonged conflicts never occurred in my hometown and its

surrounding area though quarrel did occur among individuals of different clans.

Since a clan would not normally allow any of its members to starve to death, entirely

pariahs or outcasts were much less common in the Chinese countryside though they

became more with the process of modernization and urbanization. Huck (Huckleberry

Finn) is such a pariah. Tom has a family but he joins Huck for almost all his adventures

in the novel. None of their adventures were family-based. On the other hand, the Chinese

Town was much poorer than the American one though the former was a hundred years

later than the latter. When I was a child, there was a liuchuaned tale which was

apparently based on facts. The tale so goes, in the long winter, peasants usually had two

meals one around 10:00 AM and the other at 4:00 PM. Such an arrangement aimed to

save food during the idle winter. To keep his children in bed before 10:00 AM, a father


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hang a caged duck instead of rooster at their door, telling the children, We get up only

after this bird calls at dawn. ??????????

As a result, the Chinese Town was poor but egalitarian. All residents in my hometown

lived in one-story bulgalows. Nothing could match the palace ??? lived. There was no

public school but only private schools in the American Town. In my hometown, the

schools were usually run by clans and therefore similar the public school in modern sense

as it almost cost nothing. The students could not become literate though they mastered

some Chinese characters.

In a generous prayer during a sermon, the minister pleaded for the country, for the United

States, for Congress, for the President, and for the oppressed millions groaning under the

heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms. It indicates that the American

villagers were well aware their government and their world. The illiterate Chinese

villagers almost knew nothing outside their villages. They usually did not distinguish

fairy tales from historical figures or even from what happened in the current Chinese

government. They treated them all the same as if they were from another realm or another

world. It was simply because the primary society and the secondary society are at

different levels, which are similar to letters and essays and to cells and organs.

(3) Tom Sawyer and its Matched Chinese Novels


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The author selected three fictions as being most comparable to Mark Twains Tom

Sayers, and here I call them the matched. The third of the three is a short story published

in 1936, and its communist influence is evident. This study is concentrated on the first

two novels, A Dream in the Red Mansion and The True Story of Ah Q, which were

published around 1791 and 1921 respectively. In combination, the two novels meet well

the three characteristics listed above. The first protagonist or hero in the first novel, a

juvenile, comes from an aristocratic family of a few hundreds, including the service

people, which was similar in a way to Tom Sawyer who lives with his family in a small

town. The hero in the second novel was a pariah in a village but an adult. The third was a

juvenile outcast in the coast city, Shanghai. The regard in which the first two Chinese

novels and the three Chinese writers are held is also matched well with Tom Sawyer and

its author. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote, All American literature comes from

one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn is only a sequel to

Tom Sawyer, and those two books are generally regarded the most outstanding works of

Mark Twain. The same can be said about these two novels in Chinese literature. The first

Chinese novelist in modern Western terms was Lu Hsun (1881-1936). He received his

education from Japan that had already been westernized. The first Chinese novel is the

only one that was written without influence from Western literature.

The first magazine for children appeared in 1886 in China but the early writings for

children were usually fairy tales and illustrated stories. Tom Sawyer is a novel for both

adults and juvenile children. So are the three Chinese fictions, though Chinese fictions

written only to suit childrens taste appeared much later than their Western counterparts.


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Lu Hsu occasionally wrote stories and memovier? about his childhood and therefore the

main characters are all children. But those writings were all for adult readers, because

children were simply not allowed to read such books during the Imperial China (221 BC-

1911).

(4) The Ideology

1) The Two Levels of Society and Ideology: Peter Kropotkin observed that Throughout

the history of our civilization, two traditions, two opposed tendencies have been in

conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition, the imperial tradition and the

federalist tradition, the authoritarian and the libertarian tradition. [2] Those who

denounce the secondary society seek an alternative life by freeing their spirit while those

who denounce the primary society either rebel or leave. Those two opposed traditions

represent two directions towards different types of the secondary society. There are

numerous models for a secondary society to conform to. In a fight or competition for

voting, people tend to group into two opposed camps. With the primary society that has

only one type, whoever denounces the society has to leave. If he is lucky, he can find

another primary society to join. That was what happened to ancient primitive tribal

people:

Since Chinese civilization started with a super state functioning as police to keep peace

among local powers, Chinese people were able to live in primary or quasi-primary


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societies until the Axial Age when the philosophical foundation was laid down for the

next two and half millennia. As a result, China carried over their traditions of the primary

society into the imperial age from 221 BC till 1911. In Chinese history, the two opposed

yet complementary traditions were Confucianism and Taoism. As an unofficial ideology,

Taoism did not seek an alternative type of secondary society but sought a fairy life

outside the secular world and meanwhile lent a hand to peasant uprisings from time to

time.

2) Emotional Expression: Both Chinese and Western writers describe emotion in an

exaggerated way. In A Dream in the Red Mansion, the author often goes into lengthy

details about how a master searches every corner of her heart in order to treat her slave

girl well in order to ensure her own peace of mind. In contrast, when Tom and Becky

finally came back, the whole village all woke up to show their love for the two kids.

When the Chinese hero Baoyu makes a major mistake that brings serious trouble to his

father and receives a whipping and his beloved girl comes to see him afterwards: She is

barely able to hold back her tears from eyes swollen like two peaches, and says, You

change, please! And then she leaves. Toms and Hucks adventure shows an emotional

expression of liberty, so their adventure is idealized with exaggeration so that both its

successes and dramatic twists are unbelievable, and this forms the humour of the novel.

Taoist religion aims at making its adherents godly immortals. When the Chinese hero

Baoyu finally becomes a monk, he, with a Taoist and Buddhist at each side, moves in the

air and disappears before his fathers eyes. This kind of exaggeration is only seen in fairy

tales in the West.


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3) Materialistic and Aesthetic Adventures: Tom Sawyer depicts the adventures of Tom

Sawyer and his juvenile friends. As childrens play functions as preparation for their

adult life, so those adventures serve as only miniature precursors of the adventurous adult

life in a secondary society. In modern society, many enjoy their life as an adventure, and

our advanced global society provides a safe and accommodating environment. Here we

call such goal-oriented adventure, materialistic adventure while spiritual adventure of the

mind is referred to as aesthetic adventure.

It is understandable that a materialistic adventurous lifestyle prevails in the West but

much less so in China. As a result, none of the heroes of the matched Chinese novels are

adventurous in the way Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are. In the second matched

Chinese novel, the hero has no adventurous plan of his own but, nevertheless, wanted to

join the revolution and was also once attracted by a robbery. He was too outcast to be

able to join either. In the last matched Chinese novel, the heros adventure was nothing

more than getting alms of bread in a harsh environment to fill up his stomach.

In the first matched Chinese novel, A Dream in the Red Mansion, a female character

Wangxifeng, who manages a large family of a few hundred and looks down on all the

males in front her, may be called materialistically adventurous and spiritually similar to

Tom Sawyer. The novel describes her as being ignorant and stubborn with wrong ideas

(chimi) and she finally meets her tragic end. The novel uses her as a negative stereotype

to denounce the secular world. In a Chinese way, the whole novel is the heros


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adventurous story. It starts with an ancient myth: Once the sky was broken, Goddess,

whose name is interpreted by many scholars as female sex organ, used a huge pile of

rocks to mend the sky. After finishing her job, she had a left over piece of rock. This

piece of useless rock reincarnates and becomes the hero, who is the beloved son of the

richest and noblest family on earth. He is obsessed with the idea of denouncing the

cultural tradition of this large bureaucratic family and eventually becomes a Buddhist

monk. It is a Taoist idea that life on earth is a mistake and any truly libertarian will seek

freedom outside this secondary society. Males predominated in prominent positions in

both Western and Chinese society, and so is in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin but not

in this Chinese novel where all the males are peripheral, ridiculous, nasty characters. In

the heros mind, the ideal life is idling around with a playful interest in poetry, arts, and

intellectual discussion of spirituality while both Tom and Huck illustrate an ideal life by

their purely materialistic pursuit while showing no interest in either literature or arts. Tom

was interested only in the adventurous side while reading novels and stories.

History is itself an adventure of humankind. In the West, materialistic adventure took the

form of escalating war and ended with the Second World War. In Chinese history,

aesthetic adventure ended periodically with collapses and revolutions.A thorough survey

of all emperors, 611 in total, in Chinese history found that emperors were the most

unlucky subpopulation. As high as 45% of them met unnatural deaths; and their life spans

averaged 35 years while that of the general population was 57 years, after infant deaths

were excluded. Due to lack of security and increased stress, a high proportion of

emperors showed symptoms of psychological and mental disorders. (Yang, 1989) In a


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way, Chinese history restricted its chaotic disorder of the secondary society within the

government but spread out occasionally to engulf the whole country in chaos. Western

history spread out a similar disorder all over the society but dealt with it seriously to

provide an improving social environment for materialistic adventure.

(6) Further Comparison of Tom Sawyer With its Matched Chinese Novels

1) The Shadowy Superior Society: From Tom Sawyer, we can see clearly that life in the

American Town was independent from its government and the society surrounding it.

Social hierarchy is essential for any ordered secondary society, but its influence on life

can be minimized to providing the basic rules and ensuring a suitable environment.

Government officials and their associates appeared as important people and to Tom and

Huck, their power was limited to a front seat at social gatherings. Mr. Thatcher, a judge,

even compared Tom Sawyer with George Washington. The Sunday service prayed for the

president as well as some villagers.

Due to the ancient Chinese super state of primary societies and its influence on

subsequent history, Chinese society was organized into different levels:

The Emperor and his clan + Intellectuals, Quasi-primary society


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Government officials and their candidates, Secondary society

Villages, Quasi-primary society

In the above model, the three levels were literally three different worlds with impassable

gaps between. The life of a clan, a family, or an individual might be affected by the

society at a higher level in a mysterious way beyond reason. Ordinary people like my

mother and grandmother might adapt to the influence from above the same way as to

climate change. (Li, 2010, p) Both novelists and their readers were intellectuals who fell

unfortunately into those gaps of mystery.

For many years after Maos, the former national leaders death, China developed a

nationwide superstition of worshipping Mao as a protecting god. Maos image and statues

were believed to have the magic power to protect people from natural disaster. Most

drivers had a Maos statue in front of their seat in hope that Mao would protect them in

case of traffic accidents. There was no comparable superstition developed in the United

States after George Washingtons death. It is no surprise that a social outcast was

compared to George Washington in Tom Sawyer.


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The first Chinese novel describes the life of a large family of government officials. Those

officials themselves formed a typical secondary society, their clans and family might live

a life in a quasi-primary society. This novels family life was typically a primary society,

built on emotional and esthetic value rather than a uniform goal. This novels main theme

is to condemn the secondary society and its value and praise the primary society and its

value. In this novel, every male character is bad while every female is elegant but suffers

a miserable end as the world is muddled up by males. During Confucius time, the

separation of the mans outside world and the womans inside world was largely in place.

Such a separation was still visible more than two thousand years later in this novel. The

large family of a few hundred was totally managed by women. Furthermore, the male

head of the family was deemed to be an unpractical man lacking knowledge in dealing

with secular affairs.

The higher level above this family was the emperor and his court, who were apparently a

different world of mystery and awe. Once someone was called into the palace, the whole

family were sitting awake until midnight full of fear about what misfortune might fall

upon them but finally learnt good news instead. Their daughter was a concubine of the

emperor, and they were not allowed to see her for years. When the daughter came to visit

her home for the first time, she wept with tears streaming down her face, saying, You

have sent me to a world where I cannot see anybody, waiting for years to get this

occasion. Why do we female companions and sweethearts get together today doing


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nothing by shedding tears? The whole novel foreshadows and describes the inevitable

declined trend of the family, which is in a way similar to the inescapable fate in the

ancient Greek. The ancient Greek tragedy illustrates the unfortunate nature of civilized

life on earth, and it focuses on the experience of the human as an individual. This novel

focuses on the family and the primary society, and the social tragedy is spelt out by a

mysterious force from above. Both Tom Sawyer and the hero of this Chinese novel were

partially autobiographical, and in reality, the authors autocratic family suffered

dramatically when China had a new emperor who happened to dislike them.

The third Chinese hero was a child who lived in the largest commercialized city as a

pariah. He apparently lacked the worriless free comfort Huck Finn enjoyed. He literally

lived on mercy of a society above him. He dag into the garbage outside the buildings of

rich people for discarded food, and also bag pennies from misses and laddies there.

Policemen were responsible for driving him away though everybody had the right to do

so. He also received a heavy kick on his buttocks as a reward. He did not have any sense

what going on in the upper class while the whole society knew nothing about his life.

Only under Communist influence, such an urban outcast was put in spot by the author

and reminding, he can join the patriotic revolutionary movement.

The second novel describes an outcast peasant in a village named Ah Q. He lived a life

similar to Huck Finn but he lived in a small local temple and had to do odd jobs for other

villagers to feed himself. He had no family and relatives. In place of Toms and Hucks

adventure of the independent selves, Ah Q was looked down by other villagers and he


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had to rely on his technique of spiritual victory. After being beaten up by others, he felt

better by saying to himself, I have been beaten by my sons.

The novel clearly shows the different meanings of life between the village and the world

of the government officials. The two levels of society equal human tissues and organs,

and there is an impassable gap between them. One night a landlord was robbed by a

group of bandits. The government could not find those bandits but arrested Ah Q instead

saying the government eventually got the one responsible for a robbery. It must be

pointed out that such administrative tricks are not uncommon at all in China even today.

When the court official asked Ah Q to sign his name on a prepared confession, Ah Q felt

most dignified because he was for the first time in his life offered a Chinese pen, the

brush. As he did not know how to write his name, he was allowed to draw a circle

instead. In front of so many important people, Ah Q determined to draw the circle as

round as possible to match this occasion and his own self-importance. Traditionally the

prisoner often sings a heroic song of Chinese opera to show his lofty spirit before the

execution, which often earns applauses from the spectators. Ah Q made all efforts to do

so but only managed to say, In twenty years, there will be another man of will and

strength. According to the theory of reincarnation, after death the soul will be born as

another baby who grows into a man in twenty years. Therefore the secondary society uses

it as a cover up for its failure while the primary society may see it as a treasurable

opportunity to be near heaven or God. Such fundamentally different worlds of different

meanings are absent in Mark Twains Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Huckleberry Finn. In

the latter, even Hucks illiterate drunken father knew countries outside his country. He


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was angry to see black man in decent dress and saying he would leave this country if it

continues to tolerate niggers like that. It shows that the Western secondary society is a

man-made society to suit its people, and so every one including outcasts has a say how it

should be run.

2) Outcasts, Robbers, and Peasant Uprisings: Lets here call Tom Sawyer,

Huckleberry Finn, and all the heroes or protagonists of the three most comparable

Chinese fictions outcasts, as they denounce the mainstream culture and live at the

periphery of their society with unacceptable behavior. They are one step away from real

robbers who are outlaws. Since fiction is addressed to the public, the author does not

want to offend the society by narrating how to break laws but may nevertheless express

such a wish metaphorically. For example, Tom and Huck dug holes into a house to help a

captured black man to escape only because this man had been freed by his master

already. The author apparently wished to break the law to free slaves but avoid offending

the public. Therefore the following discussion is not touch concerned with the possible

robbery behaviour and its illegality in those fictions, though the distiction between

outcasts and robbers would blur away if those fictions were considered as real happenings

in a real society.

In the last chapter, Huck is bored of civilized life and wants to leave his guardian. Tom

persuaded him to stay in order to qualify for a membership in the gang of robbers.


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According to Tom, a robber is high-toned. In most countries theyre awful high up in the

nobility---dukes and such. Tom required all gang members to swear to stand by one

another, and never tell the gangs secrets, even if youre chopped all to flinders, and kill

anybody and all his family that hurts one of the gang. (p198-99)

Chuang Tzu who lived around 369-286 BC wrote down a detailed account of Robber Chi.

When his gang members asked whether robbers have their own Tao or principle, Robber

Chi answered, What profession is there which does not have its own principles? A

robber in his recklessness comes to the conclusion that there are valuables deposited

inside a house that makes it worth breaking in, and it shows his sagacity. As a robber, he

is the first to enter, and this shows his bravery. He is the last to quit and come out, and

this shows his righteousness. He knows whether the robbery may be attempted or not,

and this shows his wisdom. He makes an equal division of the plunder among all gang

members, and this shows his human-heartedness. Without all these five qualities, no one

in the world has ever been able to become a great robber.

With such a high-toned personality and principle, a robber can certainly organize

thousands into a powerful and well disciplined army and conquer a vast land. He then

becomes a king, a more respectful title. So Tom Sawyer said, In most countries theyre

awful high up in the nobility---dukes and such. In other words, kings are great robbers

while robbers are those who are not as big as kings. It is applicable to ancient Greece

when looting wars prevailed: the winner of a war could take over all the possessions of

the defeated ones and sell them as slaves. But this does not apply to Chinese history when


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Confucianism was the dominant ideology. A Chinese robber had to accept Confucianism

before he could become a king.

According to Chuang Tzu, Confucius once tried to persuade Robber Chi to change his

behavior. The reader has to keep in mind that such a story was likely based on legends

prevailing after Confucius death and thus not very reliable, though it is still valuable to

illustrate certain aspect of Confucianism. Robber Chi had nine thousand bandits gathered

under his leadership. Confucius told him, with his ability and achievement, he could

become a king respected by the whole society if he could accept his teachings. Robber

Chi rejected Confucius suggestion, saying, If you talk about gods and spirits, I must

admit that I know nothing about them. If you talk about humanity, I will tell you my

understanding of the situation we humans are all facing: The eyes wish to look on beauty;

the ears want to hear music; the mouth wants to enjoy flavors; the will and desire want to

be gratified. The greatest longevity man can reach is a hundred years; a medium is eighty

years; and the lowest, only sixty. Apart from sickness, bereavement, mourning, anxieties,

and worries, the times when one can smile or laugh are only four or five days per month.

Heaven and earth have no limit of duration but mans life has its limit. With our limited

life and body against the background of a limitless universe, our individual existence is as

brief as the passing of a crevice by a fast running horse. Those who cannot gratify their

will and natural desires, and nourish their destined longevity, are all unacquainted with

the Tao of life.


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What Robber Chi said is not much different from what Tom said about their gang of

robbers. To gratify ones will, either adventure or materialistic pursuit, is the utmost goal.

It is okay to kill one and his whole family in order to keep a secret or to enjoy a mans

liver after it is deliciously cooked, as long as it is within the moral codes of the gang of

robbers.

Both Tom Sawyer and its sequel Huckleberry Finn show clearly that Tom and Huck

wished to become robbers and considered robbers are among the great men of the world.

In fact they lived near and had some kind of relationship with robbers and rapscallions

such as Injun, the King and his duke. Their adventures miraculously avoided any

disasters and ended with a great fortune, which may suggest robbery. In summary, the

outcasts of the Western secondary society who challenge the mainstream cultural values

still have their own life and their own dream. Both Tom and Huck eventually earned

understanding, love, and respect from characters of mainstream society. None of the

heroes in the three Chinese fictions did so.

In the primary society, whoever denounces the society has to leave. If he is lucky, he will

find another primary society to join. Since the imperial China was a unified world where

the dominant value system was Confucianism, whoever challenged the mainstream

cultural values had nowhere to go. They had either to join the robbers who lived inside

mountains and were not allowed to appear as positive characters in literature or to join an

uprising or a revolution. The hero in the first Chinese novel ended up as a monk who

lived outside the world, since there was no uprising for him to join. The hero in the


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second Chinese novel wanted to join the revolution but the local revolutionaries would

not accept him. He was eventually executed as scapegoat for an unsolved robbery. The

third Chinese fiction created an urban outcast who eventually joined the anti-government

but patriotic rally, which was most likely organized into a national uprising by the

Communists. There was a traditional association of social outcasts with uprising in

Chinese history. Since the main population was peasants, any uprising on a large scale

inevitably became peasant uprisings.

From Tom Sawyer to Huckleberry Fin, those outcasts or rogues live their own lives in

their own choice. In Chinese history, the society would not allow those outcasts to share

the same social esteem as others. They either became bandits or robbers who lived inside

mountains. If the time permitted, they would join the peasant uprising.

According to the Confucian principle, a conqueror has to set up a state for the conquered

to live and worship their ancestors. The Chinese conqueror could not sell the conquered

people as slaves as the ancient Greeks did. It left a much more room for the Chinese

robbers to develop, and they could become much bigger than the Western robbers. In a


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Discussing the psychological effects imposed on people by moving from the primary to

the secondary society, I wrote: Fear lets people worship heroes who are actually the

same as they are but hold important positions in the secondary society. Apathy and

indifference leave loopholes for cheating. It is materially beneficial to pretend to be

someone bigger and higher but hypocrisy is harmful to the soul and deadly to spirituality.

Hypocrisy is a deviation from naturalness and simplicity, and deviation from the Tao. No

luxury is enjoyable if it is consumed in front of other fellow beings of less privilege.

Ostentation and luxury are a disease exclusive to the secondary society.

In Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the deviational behaviour or so-called adventures

of their main characters are described in a humorous tone. A major part of the humour

comes from cheating: a detailed lengthy description of the cheating and the cheated

always fascinates and amuses the reader. This major part of the American novels

becomes almost invisible in their matched Chinese fictions, since Chinese cheating takes

a different form.

A Dream in the Red Mansions protagonist, hero Baoyu, has two lovers: One represents

the ideal personality of the primary society and the other, the ideal of the secondary

society. The former expressed her true emotions so freely that she scorned others and

spoke sarcastically, hurting others, while the latter was typically a nice person in every

social situation. To readers nowadays, the latter is a good-hearted nice lady, but the hero

preferred the former while his family preferred the latter. Only after the former died


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young, the family cheated the hero and had him and the latter married. After finding out,

he walked out of his marriage and became a monk. The main theme of the novel is to

praise the fully expressed human emotion and condemn the secondary society. A good-

hearted person who is nice to everyone is considered as a cheater. As a Christian value,

good-heartedness was admired in Tom Sawyer. Those who denounce a primary society

have their footing outside society since there is only one type of the primary society while

those who denounce a secondary society can still live in society, since a secondary

society can be driven by its members towards different types.

On the other hand, the hero in the third Chinese fiction cheated all the time but nobody

blamed him. He had the right to cheat to fill up his empty stomach. So cheating was seen

as part of his normal life. So were the niggers in Tom Sawyer, who said, Niggers always

cheat. I have never seen a nigger who does not cheat.(?)

Lu Hsus Ah Q cheated himself in order to cope with the unfriendly social environment.

He imagined himself the winner even when he met with a humiliating disaster. The

government executed Ah Q as the scapegoat for an unsolved case of robbery. It is

shameless cheating but nobody knew it and cared about it. Ah Q considered his execution

as part of normal human life and took it as an occasion to show off in front of hundreds of

spectators, who all came far away to enjoy the scene: The execution itself was the final

proof of Ah Qs guilt. In Tom Sawyer, spectators came for a funeral of a shameless

murder Injun and got the same satisfaction as watching a hanging.


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It is beyond doubt that there is much less cheating in a primary society than in a

secondary society. With society in imperial China modeled as above, it is hard to say

whether the ancient Chinese society had more or less cheating than Western society.

From the comparison study of matched American and Chinese fictions, one thing is

certain, that cheating is much more an issue felt psychologically by Western society than

being felt by Chinese society.

As the above model shows, the government officials and their intellectual candidates

lived in a typical secondary society. Another important Chinese novel The Scholars

which appeared during the 1750s is well matched with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry

Finn if we consider cheating as a literary theme. Instead of a protagonist and his

adventures, The Scholar gives a panorama of various scholars linked loosely together by

time and occasional connections. But the humorous effect of elaborating detailed

description of cheating is exactly the same. So cheating prevailed at the second level of

the above model or among the bureaucrats and their intellectual candidates in Chinese

history while it presented in the whole Western society. Of course cheating here was the

psychologically well felt one and so it entered to the landmarked literature. The cheating

mentioned above in the three Chinese matched fictions was well felt or even remained

unknown by the society.

4) Rapscallions and Kings/Emperors: Chinese Chess and Historical Anecdotes: The

International game of chess was said to have originated in India during the Gupta Empire


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(320 to 550 CE) and has now developed into more than two thousand variants. As two

such variants, both Western and Chinese chess are war game with various figures or

pieces moving in different patterns. There was only one notable difference: Kings and

queens move freely on the whole board of Western chess while their equivalents, the

generals stay inside an area of four squares guarded by clerks in Chinese chess

as in the game of chess, the Chinese emperor could not move freely as Western kings and

queens because of those impassable gaps between different levels of society. Although

those gaps were more social and psychological than physical, they were real. Both the

first emperor of the Chin dynasty and the Wu emperor of the Han dynasty were as

ambitious as Louis XIV in making their country a super power, so they acted as freely as

Western kings or queens. One of those two emperors brought the country to collapse and

the other reduced the population by half. To glance over the various man-made constructs

dominating the landscape today, we know we owe our predecessors a lot to have a

society where individuals can relatively freely pursue their ambitions.

In Chinese chess, soldiers move, one square at a time, and so do the generals, the

equivalents of Western kings and queens, but the former move over the whole board

while the latter, within four squares. Could a Chinese soldier replace their king or

emperor? This happened in Chinese history with the tossing-over-a-pancake revolution

when the upper and the lower classes exchanged their places extensively, a form of

revolution that was never seen in the West. To understand this, the following anecdotes

will be helpful.


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Like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn that broadened the theme of subsequent

American novels, The Scholars started a new fiction writing, so-called denouncing

novels. Instead of ridiculing scholars, those novels expose the negative side of the whole

society. The following story was likely based facts:

During the late reign of the Ching dynasty (1644-1911), some robbers appeared in the

western mountainous area of Hunan province. It was reported to the emperor, who

ordered the Hunan province to suppress them. The Hunan provincial government took

this opportunity to form a major army with their relatives and friends serving as army

officers at various levels. When this army arrived in this region more than half a year

later, all the robbers were gone. Nobody knew what the army was here for. Peasants who

saw soldiers and robbers in the same way were so frightened that they all ran away from

the army. The army caught them all and killed them all, and razed their villages to the

ground. Then they reported to the emperor in how they fought bravely and killed many

robbers. The emperor ordered a substantial reward to the army including promotion of the

army officers. Since Western influence had already entered China, the county

government accused the army of killing innocent peasants. With the support of the county

government, thousands of local peasants gathered to protest and request justice, a process

lasted for months. It fell far short of reaching the emperor who almost never took back an

order even when it was wrong. In the end, the provincial government paid a little money

to those families who had lost members.


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All reports to the emperor were traditionally written in strict format and left space for the

emperor to write his order in red ink. Of course the emperor only read part of those

reports and issue orders on a few. When the last emperor of China was driven out of

Chinese history from his palace, ninety bags of such reports and orders were sold as

waste papers. A scholar paid three times of the price and bought them back. Nobody

cared to find out the above two reports with the emperors orders and correct them, and it

would be wrong to do so as it was part of the Chinese imperial system. So the Chinese

official history still says today that the army carried out the emperors order and

successfully wiped out hundreds of robbers. The emperor was so pleased to order a royal

reward to the army. The gaps in the above model were indeed impassable.

The story shows the close association of robbers and soldiers in Chinese history. A

popular saying goes, A good piece of iron will not be made into nails while a good man

will not become a soldier. In ancient Greece where looting wars prevailed, soldiers

looted on foreign land but were well disciplined at home. Since the vast land of China,

Chinese soldiers hardly knew any foreign land. They often behaved like robbers on their

own land. The Chinese government did not make a distinction between robbers and

rebels, since all rebels had to rob the rich for their supplies. A famous rebel who captured

Beijing in 1644 started his career as a soldier, and then became a robber for years. He

progressed from a soldier to a robber, and the to a rebel. Maos father was once a soldier,

and Mao started his first military base by taking it over from a group of robbers and

furthermore, Mao enrolled all those robbers into his army. The national government then

called them the Communist robbers.


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In ancient Greece, all citizens were soldiers. Since slaves and women were neither

soldiers nor citizens, soldiers were regarded as prestigious. It was quite different in

Chinese history where as less as one per cent of the peasants would be more than enough

to form an enormous army to defend the country. When you enrolled one per cent of the

adult males, of course you would select the best fighters. The best fighter, either as a

robber, a rebel, or a soldier, was in no way a good peasant and likely the worst. So the

Chinese peasants saw them as the nails of all iron and the bad guys of all males.

Rapscallions would be a proper name for them, and they eventually formed the basis for

the government in Chinese history, at least in the view of most peasants.

An ordinary Chinese peasant had two sons: one works hard while the other does not. The

father said to the lazy one, See what a household of wealth has your brother got

compared to yours. When a peasant uprising broke out, as a response, many, including

this lazy son, stood up against the government all over China. A year later, he was lucky

enough to capture the capital and became a self-appointed king. Three or four years later,

he was the emperor of all China, and then he told his father, See what a household of

wealth has my brother got compared to mine. When he asked his ministers why he was

able to win the final victory over his rival, one answered: It was because the emperor was

a rapscallion while his rival was not. His major rival was a high-born aristocrat. In

Chinese history, there was an emperor who lived exactly like Huckleberry Finn when he

was young. The only difference was, Huck idled around while this would be emperor had


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to beg first and entered a Buddhist temple to do odd jobs in order to feed himself

afterwards, because China was economically less developed.

Those rapscallion emperors had a problem trusting their rapscallion comrades. So they

saw all rapscallions have the potential of replacing them. They killed many of those who

had fought battles beside him. Chinese emperors were not the happy people. Some

Chinese scholars made a thorough survey of all emperors, 611 in total, in Chinese history.

They found that emperors were the most unlucky subpopulation. As high as 44% of them

ended in unnatural deaths; their life spans average 35 years while that of the general

populace was 57 years, after infant deaths were excluded. Due to lack of security and

increased stress, a high proportion of emperors showed symptoms of psychological and

mental disorders. Similarly some half of the Roman emperors ended unnatural deaths.

Although kings and emperors were a dangerous profession in both Western and Chinese

history especially during their early time, but I tend to think that in the West, this

profession might be psychologically less depressing as they played a much more active

role in their society. Therefore, Louis XIV pretended to be great in front of his painter

and his people, he might well have felt great too. Only people like Huckleberry Finn

might have considered him as a rapscallion in a hypocritical costume. Chinese emperors

portraits usually stayed inside the palace and were not intended to impress people. During

the imperial phase of Chinese history, the emperor was well sheltered by the gaps

between the different levels of the above model society. Since the Chinese neither

developed the social mechanisms to balance and control power nor facilitated a safe


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social environment at the secondary society level for individuals to materialize their

ambitions. Most Chinese emperors might not have felt as great as Louis XIV did.

The original Chinese word for rapscallions is wulai, a trust-unworthy man of no

principles. In other words, a robber who lets go his principles becomes king or emperor.

In a total anarchy the most ruthless will win and the slightest hesitation of moral instinct

will be fatal. As described in Huckleberry Finn, the two rapscallions, the king and the

duke, went to the uninformed village to cheat those villagers. It alludes that some kings

and their dukes ruled their states like rapscallions. But different states of better rulers

were allowed to coexist beside them. In other words, kings or emperors ruled their people

like a rapscallion by cheating in the West while the emperor in Chinese history could be

in fact a rapscallion himself.

References

[1] Paul S. Ropp (1990): The Distinctive Art of Chinese Fiction. In P. S. Ropp ed,

Heritage of China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

[2] Peter Kropotkin (1912): Modern Science and Anarchism, 1912. Quoted from: Gordon

Marshall (1994): The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford

University Press. p14.

reading mark twain’s tom sawyer under a new light

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