Fourth of July

The Fourth of July, also known to the boys of St. Petersburg as the Glorious Fourth, stands as the great national holiday of the summer, a day of parades, celebration, and public spectacle. For Tom Sawyer, it represents the pinnacle of festive expectation, a day when the ordinary constraints of village life are suspended and the extraordinary becomes possible. The holiday is so central to the town's calendar that it shapes the ambitions of the boys throughout the year, providing a fixed point around which their schemes and desires revolve.

Anticipation and the Cadets of Temperance

Tom's longing for the Fourth of July is so intense that it becomes the primary motivation for his brief and miserable membership in the Cadets of Temperance. He joins the organization, attracted by the showy character of its regalia, and promises to abstain from smoking, chewing, and profanity as long as he remains a member. The hope of a chance to display himself in his red sash on the Fourth of July is the only thing that keeps him from withdrawing from the order, as he finds himself tormented by a desire to drink and swear. He gives up that hope before he has worn his shackles over forty-eight hours, and instead fixes his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, the justice of the peace, who is apparently on his deathbed and would have a big public funeral. Tom's disappointment is complete when the Judge, after fluctuating discouragingly, is pronounced on the mend and then convalescent; Tom resigns in disgust, and that very night the Judge suffers a relapse and dies. The funeral is a fine thing, and the Cadets parade in a style calculated to kill the late member with envy, but Tom is a free boy again.

The Great Disappointment

When the Glorious Fourth itself finally arrives, it proves to be in some sense a failure. It rains hard, and there is no procession in consequence. The greatest man in the world, as Tom supposes, Mr. Benton, an actual United States Senator, proves an overwhelming disappointment, for he is not twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it. The rain and the Senator's ordinary stature combine to drain the day of all its promised glory, leaving Tom with a sense of letdown that mirrors the pattern of his other summer disappointments. The holiday, which should have been the climax of the season, instead becomes another entry in a string of failed amusements that includes a diary abandoned after three days, a minstrel show that provides only two days of happiness, and a circus that is played at for three days in tents made of rag carpeting before being abandoned.

Narrative Significance

The Fourth of July functions in the narrative as a marker of the gap between Tom's romantic expectations and the mundane reality of village life. It is one of the few fixed, public holidays in the summer calendar, and its failure to deliver the transcendent experience Tom craves contributes to the general dreariness of his vacation. The holiday's significance is further diminished by the absence of Becky Thatcher, who has gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her parents during vacation, leaving no bright side to life anywhere. The dreadful secret of the murder is a chronic misery, and then come the measles. The Fourth of July, rather than being a moment of liberation and joy, becomes another weight in the accumulating burden of Tom's summer, a symbol of how even the most anticipated events can fall short of the imagination's demands.