Tom Sawyer Passage Analysis

I want to analyze the passage where Tom and his friends, Huckleberry Finn and Joe Harper, decide to leave the town and become outlaws. They began by traversing the Mississippi River to a small, inhabited island: a good example of a relatively untouched nature. After the outlaws had been being missing for a few days, the townspeople began to worry and "tears were being shed" (111). Yet, all the townspeople could do was release white smoke from the ferry-boat; no actual search effort (outside of the town) was performed. This shows that to the townspeople, the boundary of their efforts is nature itself. Ironically, the town and the townspeople have become the outlaws' boundaries. As outlaws, the kids made an agreement to live a life of crime away from all civilized life. Therefore, Tom had to covertly sneak off the island to see Aunt Polly, otherwise he would be seen by his friends as a deserter of their agreement. But one must notice that neither boundaries are permanent. The townspeople have the ability/technologies (ferry-boat) to cross the river and search for the missing kids, and the kids have the ability to swim back to the town and abandon their lives as outlaws. This teaches us an important lesson: there are no absolutes or true boundaries in life.