Twain uses imagery throughout Tom’s dream sequence in Chapter 2 to emphasize to the reader how difficult Tom's life in Offal Court is. Tom, lying in bed, often dreams of fabulous wealth:
For a long time his pain and his hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jewelled and gilded princelings who live in vast palaces [...] All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes, drinking in delicious music [...]
Immediately, the reader is confronted with how dangerous and decrepit Tom’s conditions are (his “pain and hunger,” the sounds of violence throughout the building). These details stand in contrast to the extravagant images of the royal life he imagines. In his dreams, “jewelled and gilded” princes reside in a “blaze of light,” and Tom among them “breath[es] perfumes” and “drink[s] in delicious music.” In the drive to blot out his difficult reality, Tom employs each one of his senses, creating an elaborate fantasy world in which he is the center of attention (“the glories of his royal estate…”).
Tom’s dreams alleviate his pain in the short term, but when the morning comes it “intensif[ies] the sordidness of his surroundings a hundredfold.” The effect on the reader is similar. When the narrator lists all of the ways the princes of Tom’s imagination indulge their senses, it only makes Tom’s life seem more deprived. The luxury of this fantasy, as reflected in Twain’s carefully chosen details, is seemingly equal in magnitude to the destitution of Tom’s real life as a neglected, impoverished child.
In this striking set of images, Twain describes the city of London at the beginning of the royal banquet:
The air was laden with music; the river banks were beruffled with joy-flames; the distant city lay in a soft, luminous glow from its countless invisible bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted with sparkling lights [...]; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted [...] with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and [....] artillery.
Focusing mostly on image and sound, Twain paints a portrait of a city glimmering with celebration (“joy-flames”) and wealth (“many a slender spire”). The sight dazzles Tom, though it leaves his “little friends” (Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey) unmoved.
The imagery is detailed and intense, capturing the general mirth of the crowd (“hoarse roar of cheers”) as well as the might of the British crown (“ceaseless flash and boom of artillery”). The imagery effectively imparts the scale of the event, as well as the emotional reaction it evokes from the British people.
The imagery also clearly captures the psychological effect the spectacle has on Tom. The bonfires cast the entire city in a “soft, luminous glow.” The spirit of the celebration transforms the cityscape once familiar to him into a new, dreamy version of itself. Tom finds this new London “a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing.” Why are his friends so unmoved?
The imagery in this scene grounds the action in a distinct time and place, and it also shows the reader the lengths to which the upper classes are willing to go to create a sense of distance between themselves and the common people. The drama of the spectacle does not affect Jane or Elizabeth at all because banquets like these are familiar to them already, and the girls know that these events exist to entrench class differences between high-born and low-born Britons. This feast was thrown to demonstrate the power of the monarchy and to create a sense of exclusivity and superiority around the upper classes. Women like Jane and Elizabeth have been hailed with ceremony their entire lives and understand its import, whereas Tom is experiencing it for the first time.
