ABSTRACT
Mark Twain started writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with high hopes of outwitting God by upending the scenario the Bible offers about the origin of sin. Tom's use of his scapegoats the friends who take up the paintbrush given to Tom by Aunt Polly as punishment seems indeed to be based on the Bible, as his technique of prohibition and temptation. That role of scapegoat, comes to be played by Injun Joe. The cave is directly related to existing mysteries, those of a cross and a maze. Tom's escape from the cave after his near-death experience has significance in that it provides solutions to for these mysteries. Tom's ability to find solutions to these mysteries is in contrast with Joe's defeat and death. , Tom and Huck seem finally to have reached the bottom of Twain's ambivalence towards the cadaver, the source of temptation and prohibition.
