The Model Boy

The Model Boy is a fixed social category in the village of St. Petersburg, a type of child that the community holds up as an ideal of obedience, piety, and cleanliness. Tom Sawyer knows the model boy very well and loathes him. The model boy is the opposite of everything Tom is and wants to be: he is the standard of behavior that adults use to measure and reproach Tom, and the figure of envy and hatred for the other boys.

Identity and Social Role

The living embodiment of the Model Boy is Willie Mufferson. He is described as taking as heedful care of his mother as if she were cut glass, always bringing her to church, and being the pride of all the matrons. The boys all hate him because he is so good, and because he has been “thrown up to them” so much by adults as a reproach. His white handkerchief hangs out of his pocket behind, accidentally, on Sundays, a detail that marks his fastidiousness. Tom, who has no handkerchief, looks upon boys who have them as snobs. The Model Boy is thus a figure of social discipline, a walking rebuke to the natural wildness of boyhood.

Tom's Antagonism

Tom's hatred of the Model Boy is visceral and personal. He is not the Model Boy of the village, and he knows it. The model boy is the standard against which Tom's own behavior is judged, and Tom resents this comparison. When Tom is in trouble, his aunt or the community implicitly or explicitly contrasts him with the model boy. The model boy's existence is a constant pressure on Tom to conform, and Tom's rebellion against him is part of his larger rebellion against the constraints of civilization.

Narrative Significance

The Model Boy functions as a foil to Tom, defining by opposition what Tom is: adventurous, mischievous, independent, and alive. The model boy is a static, lifeless ideal, while Tom is a dynamic, flawed, and growing character. The community's reverence for the Model Boy is part of the adult world's hypocrisy that the novel satirizes; the boys see through it and hate the model boy, while the adults praise him. The Model Boy is thus a key element in the novel's critique of conventional morality and its celebration of the spirited, imperfect boyhood that Tom represents.