Naughty children in Gafur Gulam’s and Mark Twain’s works Contents Introduction Chapter I. Uzbek and American literature and their impact to the world Literature

3.2. The problem of children in the book of Gafur Gulam “Mischievous person” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” of Mark Twain

In his early years Gafur Gulamovich Gulamov a famous Uzbek author wrote a book called “Mischievous person”. In this book he raised the problem of “naughty” children. The word “naughty” in the following work will mean a person that never stops, who is full of energy and optimism. Here it is more a searching soul rather than just a disobedient child. This work of the Uzbek writer got coincided with another literary masterpiece of American literature “Tom Sawyer” of Mark Twain.

Both authors touched on the same topic. These stories describing children with a generous inexhaustible famous writers to give a pure example of an ordinary child of the time.
In Gafur Gulam’s “Mischievous person” the whole story begins with the description of the local “bazaar”. It is the best place for local boys to grow up, develop and get all the skills needed for future life.
Here the same as in “Tom Sawyer” we can see situation of misunderstanding and confrontation of children with their parents. Parents though try to help and show the right way of living to their disobedient trusted child. They merely love their kids that is why sometimes it is just necessary to punish their beloved little ones to teach them responsibility, obeisance, honesty.
In both stories boys do naughty things and cause problems to another people but they have not only the ability to cause problems, but also the ability to solve those problems and find the way ways out of them.
The dream of being independent and living in a world of big deals is a strong feature of both Tom Sawyer and the narrator of “Mischievous person” ( the name is not mentioned anywhere in the book). They do think that they already prepared enough for the survival away from home, they try their best. They look here and there, they try different friends to be with, different places to live , but: “East or West, home is best”, says a well-known English proverb. This is the way they learn, not by sitting at the desk at school, and listening to those who went through many things in life, to teachers, but instead of this they explore it on their own: by touching, smelling, putting on, working out, sometimes being beaten up, but it is the best way to explore the world for them.
They go through many situations to become a real person. Those situations are not always the easy and funny ones. Sometimes, moreover boys get on the verge of dealing. They can be even killed for a stolen food or broken vase.
In Gafur Gulam’s “Mischievous person” the narrator goes a little bit father in his unruliness. May be it is because he is little older than Tom or may be it is a little difference in nurture, he was up brought an a different culture, among people with different valuables in life and different opinion of things. A youngster in “Mischievous person” starts with guiltless taking an egg and grease without mother’s permission at home, but then he goes on to accidental mistreatment of birds in his uncle’s house, steps to cheating while helping to prepare the body of deceased for funeral. Goes further to blackmailing and fleecing money and food for keeping silence; misbehaving in priests house; lost of other people’s property, in the situation with sheep; playing cruelty with his best friend; while teaching him how to behave with a cow; a step rather for in its severeness – killing a cow to punish their master and to sell the meat; making an explosion and finally the best decision he made during several months of living independently – “going home, HOME” as he was talking to himself silently.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a renowned book written by Mark Twain in the 19th century. Tom Sawyer is a character who has lived on through the generations without losing his popularity. Millions today still enjoy The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
The story takes place in Missouri in a small town nestled along the mighty Mississippi River. It is a wonderful tale of a young boy and his propensity to find trouble with a capital T.
Tom Sawyer is a mischievous, yet kind-hearted, boy who lives with his Aunt Polly and brother Sid. Tom and Sid's mother had passed away and Aunt Polly stepped in to mother the boys, but she cannot bring herself to be strict with them, and Tom has an instinctual ability to exploit this factor whenever it suits him.
Young Tom isn't a "bad" boy, but instead a thoughtful and sensible kid who happens to be a magnet for trouble. The plot of "Tom Sawyer" centers around Tom's knack for finding himself in the midst of many dilemmas which lead to adventure. He has an innate ability to read people and can easily utilize human nature to work to his advantage.
Throughout the pages of "Tom Sawyer" you'll find Tom influencing others to perform his chores while he scurries off to his next adventure. If he's not being persuasive, he has a tendency to be manipulative such as convincing others to give him a favored toy or treat.
Tom also has a keen way of managing to sway others under the guise of fun. There is many a time he convinces other boys to join him on journeys against their better judgment. Tom's quick ability to use reverse psychology to turn the proverbial tables on both his friends and nemesis works like a charm every time - almost.
As Tom finds himself on top of situations, he often finds himself in hot water such as the time he traded all of the trinkets he manipulated from the other kids for tickets earned for memorizing Bible verses. In the end he has more tickets than everyone and wins the award in Sunday School. However when asked specific questions about the Bible he blurts out the wrong answer and embarrasses himself.
Young Sawyer is very charismatic and he woos, and later wins the affection of Becky Thatcher. He accomplishes this by using superb "show-off" techniques that boys this age tend to use when wanting to impress a girl. It works smashingly and the two hit it off. He is later spurned when Becky learns of a former relationship he had with another girl.
After getting in trouble with Aunt Polly for something Sid did, Tom becomes upset and runs off with his pal Huckleberry Finn. The two boys later witness a murder and this is where the story really begins to take off because the real murderer puts the blame on an innocent man and Tom and Huck are the only ones who have witnessed what really happened.
The murderer is a violent man and Tom and Huck know if they tell on the murderer he will extract revenge, and are too afraid to say anything about it, but they still feel guilty that a man is in jail wrongly accused. Tom has this deeply embedded in his subconscious but on the outside he is quickly back to his antics and fun-loving ways; but the murder weighs heavily on his mind.
To get his mind off of the murder he puts together a band of pirates with his friends Joe Harper and Huck Finn. While out on an "adventure" on the river and an island, it seems somehow everyone in town thinks they've drowned. They use this misunderstanding to their benefit and decide to take off and be "real" pirates. For days they play on an island and then later to everyone's surprise show up at their own funerals. Aunt Polly is justifiably upset, but later forgives Tom when she finds an undelivered note in his pocket which had expressed for her not to worry.
Eventually the trial begins for the murder and the murderer has not confessed but instead continues the charade that someone else committed it. Tom and Huck become more than a bit nervous and swear to keep mum about what they saw. Tom later is struck by conscience and tells the court what he saw; the murderer escapes and now Tom has to fear revenge.
The rest of the book continues with many various adventures, but all the while the escaped murdered weighs heavily on Tom's mind. All of the preceding events lead to culminating adventures which include another attempted murder, a cave, missing persons and buried treasure.
Twain has an incredible ability to weave Tom's personal and leadership attributes into a story which makes it appealing to both children and adults. Once you pick this book up you'll be compelled to read it all the way through.
Tom’s character might be summed up in the statement that he makes when Aunt Polly chastises him for lying to her and more important, letting her make a fool of herself in front of Mrs. Harper: “Auntie , I know that it was mean, but I didn’t mean to be mean. I didn’t Honest” His statement reflects the universal thoughtlessness and inconsideration that such youths have for the adult. Rather than detract from Tom’s total worth, it merely confirms that his actions are those of most early adolescents. And to Tom’s credit, he does acknowledge that his good joke now looks mean and shabby. During the nineteenth century it was a very common practice to use a paddle or some other instrument in order to whip children.
Although boys were whipped frequently, young girls were virtually never whipped. Knowing this fact increase the horror of what Becky faces if it is revealed that she tore the anatomy book. Not only would it have been a horrible ordeal for Becky, who is basically sweet to be beaten, but it also would have been a disgrace for her family. Tom’s actions – accepting the blame for the torn page and taking the beating in Becky’s place- redeem his character and are best summarized by Becky’s simple statements “Tom, how COULD you be so noble.” The two incidents concerning the spilled ink on the spelling book and the torn page in the pressed anatomy book make a parallel contrast to the earlier scene in which Tom hurt his Aunt Polly: Tom is falsely accused of spilling ink on his spelling book and Becky could have easily saved him, but she remounts silent. I contrast, Tom could have let Becky take her deserved punishment for her. In this contrast, Tom is seen as more kind and less spiteful than Becky. Chapter XIX functions partly to make Tom aware of Becky’s actions. Feeling contrite for now badly he has treated his Aunt Polly, he is able to return too school and offer an apology to Becky for ignoring her And her picnic. Chapter XX presents the further estrangement between Becky and Tom. By the end of Chapter XX however , everything is resolved between them and we are ready for the later cave scene where the two youths will be lost together.
With the girls essays – filled with melancholy – Twain pokes fun at the tender sentimentality of the average person and the popular literature of the day. He is satirizing the average person’s preference for cheap, morbid writing that has no literary value. Instead of this melodramatic clap-trap, Twain would prefer a simple straightforward essay.
This chapter also presents a realistic picture of the typical “country school and a delightful episode about the student’s reverence on the schoolteacher which involves the cat, Mrs. Dobbin’s wig, and finally his bald head painted gold by the sign painter’s boy. This scene serves as another example like the Sunday school scene in Chapter IX of Twain’s satirizing authority figures. As with chapter XXI the purpose of chapter XXII is not so much to move the story along, but to show the boredom that pervades during vacation in a small town. Twain presents this boredom by showing the boy’s trying one type of amusement and than quickly changing to another type. The significance of both these chapters is that Tom’s life any child’s life, in fact can be common and boring.
During the summer month, so anxiously awaited the boys feel an isolation and loneliness that they do not necessarily feel during the rest of the year. In other words, tedium is worse than school. Making matters worse for Tom, Becky is always on vacation, thus he struggles to find things to do. For this reason and because he is attracted to their fancy uniforms - Tom joins the cadets of temperance. He soon drops it, however and picks up something else to occupy him for a time. The irony is that Tom wants to wear the showy uniform: however the cadets are only wearing uniforms because judge is dying. When the judge doesn’t die, there is no need for wearing the uniform and thus, Tom quits.
In many of his writings , Twain pokes fun at organized religion and he takes the opportunity to do so again here. With Tom and his friends, Twain points.
After Tom Sawyer, from the middle of 1870s to 1880s,Mark Twain wrote a lot of works which later became his masterpieces. This period is a climax of Mark Twain's writing life. For example, the famous novel "the prince and pauper" which focus on the cruel law working for the ruler; "life on Mississippi" which praised working people emotionally and expressed his yearning for free life and the most important novel, his master work "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are all produced in this period.
Actually, these are closely related to the society situation at that time. From that time, class struggle became more and more intense. Worker's strike blossomed here and there. But most of them were suppressed cruelly. Many workers were sentenced to death with fabricate crimes.
Both stories show how ordinary boys, who always lived with their parents under their care, learn how to be smart enough to survive without not even one coin in the pocket. On their life path, they learn to work, work hard, or if you don’t want to work – how to make other people work for you without forcing them. All the situations taught them to live with emptiness in their stomach, holes in their cloths. Bruises on their legs, calluses on their hands and most important thing, to live with dream in their heart.
These two stories were written by authors of different cultures with the difference of being published on 40 years with the description of people from completely different countries, but all the same they show one thing: Naughty children are not bad children, naughty children are rather brave, smart, independently thinking little grown up persons.