Tom Sawyer is the novel’s main character. He is a rambunctious boy who loves adventure and “hates work more than he hates anything else” (3). Tom doesn’t appear to live by a code aside from a worship of mischief for its own sake. Twain states that Tom “was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and he loathed him” (5). The model boy is Tom’s archenemy.

Tom is an impatient character. Cousin Mary says, “He’s always in such a rush that he never thinks of anything” (145). When Tom does think, it is usually to succumb to flights of fancy and drama. When Aunt Polly thinks he is dead, and Tom listens to her mourn him from under her bed, “[t]he theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appeal[s] strongly to his nature” (124). Earlier in the story, when he contemplates his death, he imagines Aunt Polly begging for forgiveness at his deathbed, weeping over his coffin, and so on. Tom’s imagination is so vivid that he often brings himself to tears when he envisions other people grieving for him. When he pictures their suffering, it also raises his estimation of himself, as if their imagined grief is a testament to his true worth.