mark twain, the adventures of tom sawyer（马克吐温的《汤姆·索亚历险记》）.pdfVIP

Tom Sawyer’s Fence On the Border between Leisure and Income* Gijs van Donselaar “What do you call work?” “Why ain’t that work?” (..) “Well, maybe it is, and maybe it aint. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.” Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1. Tom Sawyer was terribly annoyed when, on a hot summer day, his aunt told him to whitewash the fence in the garden. Tom had rather gone to the river to engage in his usual tomfoolery but there is no escape from his aunt’s orders: the fence must be whitewashed. Yet, that afternoon Tom ends up enjoying his off-school leisure after all, sitting in the shade watching his friends doing the hard labour on the fence. Meanwhile he has become the owner of some of their highly valued possessions (among which half an apple, a dead rat, a piece of blue glass to look through, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything). How did he manage? Well, cunning Tom succeeded to convince his friends (who came by to tease him) that whitewashing a fence on a hot summer day is not at all a depressing activity, that, on the contrary, it is a spectacular, prestigious and very desirable thing to do. So successful was Tom, so inspiring