The glorious whitwasher.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning and everything was peaceful. A young boy wanted to play, but he had to work. He had to whitewash an entire fence, but he didn’t want to whitewash anything. What if this was you? What would you have done? “The Glorious Whitewasher” by Mark Twain is about who a young boy named Tom who had to whitewash his fence, but of course he didn’t want to. He gets out of his work by making it seem incredible to the other boys, so they would want to whitewash the fence for him. With a little effort you can dodge most problems that are thrown at you.
Because of the problems, this story demonstrates the mode of comedy. The story began with normalcy like all comedy stories do, because it is a normal day for Tom. He goes outside to play, but the conflict arises. The conflict is that he has to whitewash the huge fence in his front yard and of course he doesn’t want to whitewash it. Soon the conflict is fully realized by Tom and he doesn’t what to whitewash the entire fence. Finally the resolution occurs by Tom getting most of the town boys to whitewash the fence for him by making the job seem fun. Then finally normalcy returns because Tom runs out of whitewash, so he can’t make the boys do the chores anymore.
Throughout this comedy, there are many characters that play important roles in the story. Tom is one of the characters. He doesn’t like to work at all. He is a trickster and a con artist. He is also mischievous. Ben is a character in this story too. He really likes to imagine is a boat on the Mississippi and he was easily persuaded into Toms whitewashing trick. Jim is in the story too. He procrastinates and he is easily persuaded too. He likes to sing a lot, but he wasn’t tricked into whitewashing like the others.
With these characters come symbols that represent things that they don’t seem to be. The whitewash brush is a symbol in this story because it represents a trade that can get others to do the work for Tom. The marble that Tom had represented freedom for Tom because if Jim takes the marble he will be freed from the job that he has to do. Also the whitewash is a symbol too. It represents the work that had to be done in the time.
Because of these symbols the story can be a comedy to the end. As you can see most problems can be dodged with a little effort. When the boys came to whitewash for Tom; they had to give Tom something to whitewash. He gets most of his wealth by doing these things. If you had a job you didn’t want to do like Tom, how would you avoid it?