Actually, Donald Trump would be no stranger to Twain. His endearingly mischievous character, Tom Sawyer, reappears in different guises throughout Twain’s writing career. At first harmless, Tom plays in the make-believe child’s world of St. Petersburg, and suffers no real consequences for his (forgivable) selfishness. In __Huckleberry Finn Tom returns to play in a much more adult world – turning serious issues of slavery into the horse-laugh of the last pages, turning Jim into a minstrel “darky”, all while endangering not only Jim’s freedom, but his life. Tom reappears in A Connecticut Yankee, this time as Hank Morgan, the techno-American who would turn King Arthur’s England into Hank’s own version of America (remember Viet Nam? Remember Iraq?). When Arthur’s culture declines to become America, Hank destroys it in order to save it. Finally, solipsistic Tom reappears as Satan, or Number 44, in Twain’s final works. What is hinted at in the earlier works is made explicit: the character’s belief that the world is an extension of the self, that it can be moulded to reflect the self, and that if the world doesn’t enjoy that prospect, it can be punished, even destroyed. Tom’s narcissism is tolerated in St. Petersburg, where no one has to work, and where “adventure” is most prized. But operating in a more real world, where there are real consequences to one’s decisions, that narcissism becomes darkly destructive. Tom Sawyer is very much an American character, and Donald Trump appears finally as Tom’s blonde embodiment. The dark satire that marked Twain’s later work, where he fully explored the extent of Tom’s rapacious appetites and their horrific consequences, is, I fear,
about to embrace us.
