I am Brazilian, I frequent the Mathematica Stack Exchange, and I've never heard of Tom Sawyer.

So it was confusing when I read a meta post that described people as "Tom Sawyers".

"There are a few people who frequent the Mathematica.SE site for the purpose of soliciting extensive free program development and/or debugging services. I think of such people as Tom Sawyers, and they really bug me. So I ask: can more be done to discourage such people?

What is this reference to Tom Sawyer supposed to mean?

I know he is a character in a book (hence why I'm asking this question here), but that's about it.

  • 5
    I thank everyone who is editing my question. Because you are being attentive to what I wrote and I am learning to write better in English with people who LIKE to read.
    – LCarvalho
    May 20 '17 at 19:50

This is referencing the plot of the second chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. In this chapter, Tom tricks the other boys into doing his work for him:

“What do you call work?”

“Why, ain’t that work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:



The brush continued to move.



“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”







“I’ll give you all of it!”
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 2 - taken from the PBS site

What they are saying here, is that this character is making the other people do his work for him - and that these people are doing the same thing, pushing their work onto other people. (FWIW, they are commonly referred to as help vampires across the Stack Exchange network.)

Since Tom Sawyer tricked the other people into doing the work that he was supposed to do, they are comparing these people to him.

  • 3
    I hope I did not behave this way too.
    – LCarvalho
    May 20 '17 at 20:23
  • 1
    Not at all. There's a context to the reference that you simply didn't possess.
    – Deacon
    May 21 '17 at 2:38

Your Answer

