Chapter five revolves around the remainder of Sunday morning following Tom's schooling, specifically with the morning sermon. The whole town is in attendance: Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, Tom; the widow Douglas; Mayor and Mrs. Ward; lawyer Riverson; and a variety of other characters that remain nameless, such as the town belle, matrons, and young clerks. The church is bustling with noise as the minister begins his hymn, and Twain remarks that there was never "a church choir that was not ill-bred."
After the hymn and notices of meetings and societies have been read, the minister begins a prayer that seems excessive, or as Twain puts it: "a good, generous, prayer." The prayer pleads for the church, for the "children of the church," for the state to the President, for the "poor sailors" to the "Oriental despotisms," and continues on in this manner until a final "Amen" concludes it. Much like the prayer, the remainder of church is barely endured by Tom Sawyer, who counts the pages of the sermon but fails to listen to any of it. Tom's attentions, instead, focus on the antics of a poodle playing with a beetle. The poodle, eventually, sits on the beetle and disrupts the sermon with its distressful howling and barking, bringing the entire congregation to stifled laughter. After the chaotic disruption, the sermon continues and Sunday services conclude.
Chapter 5 Analysis:
The first idea that Twain establishes in chapter five is the centrality of the Church to the town of St. Petersburg. On Sunday morning, all of the town's "respected" inhabitants attend the Church; it is as much a social function as it is a religious one. The town of St. Petersburg is small, poor, and quiet; the church, with its cracked church bell that resounds through the town, becomes a quintessential symbol of small-town life.
Ironically, it is this quality of small-town life the centrality of the church that Twain satirizes throughout the entire novel. The minister is described as unnecessarily long-winded. The subject of his sermon is never given any importance; instead, Twain focuses on his speech and mannerisms, describing his sentences as a plunge "down from a spring-board." Even the prayer seems to drag on forever, with the minister sending his prayers out to anyone and everyone. Even the "sociables" are unable to stay attuned to the misters during his monotonous speech.
The antics between Tom, the dog, and the beetle provide comic relief to the church. What is most important, however, is the fact that the attendees pay more attention to the antics of the pinch-bug than they do to the speech given from the pulpit. When the church is "suffocating with suppressed laughter," Twain describes it as "unholy mirth." This dichotomy between the serious and the playful - the moral and the mischievous - parallels Tom's constant struggle between his need for adventure and his will to "be good."