The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Typical reasons I choose this particular book might be because:

I like Mark Twain very much; he is very humorous and talented.

Abstract：

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was written in 1876 by Mark Twain (1835-1910), or Samuel Clements, a famous American author in the early 19th century. The character Tom Sawyer is a clever but mischievous and adventurous boy. The story tells the childhood stories of Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn: racing bugs, fighting in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on theMississippi River

 

Key word: Mark Twain, adventures, Moral and Social Maturation, Society’s Hypocrisy, Freedom through Social Exclusion, Superstition in an Uncertain World

 

Brief Introduction of Mark Twain

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens inFlorida,Missouri, in 1835, and grew up in nearby Hannibal, a smallMississippi Rivertown.Hannibalwould become the model forSt. Petersburg, the fictionalized setting of Twain’s two most popular novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The young Clemens grew up in a prosperous family—his father owned a grocery store as well as a number of slaves—but he was sent out to work at the age of twelve after his father’s death. As a young man, he traveled frequently, working as a printer’s typesetter and as a steamboat pilot. In this latter profession he gained familiarity with the river life that would furnish much material for his writing. He also gained his pen name, Mark Twain, which is a measure of depth in steamboat navigation. Twain enlisted in the Confederate militia in 1861, early in the Civil War, but he soon left to pursue a career in writing and journalism inNevadaandSan Francisco. His articles and stories became immensely popular in the decades.

 

 

 2. Plot

   An imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two disciples were David and Goliath.

Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him. Their romance collapses when she learns that Tom has been “engaged” before—to a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a “cure” for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American “half-breed” Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom’s anxiety and guilt begin to grow.

Tom, Huck, and Tom’s friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their newfound freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.

Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky’s favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon Muff Potter’s trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window.

Summer arrives, and Tom and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below. Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, Tom and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see Tom and Huck’s tools, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it.

Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal’s Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident ofSt. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero.

Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky’s father, Judge Thatcher, locks up the cave. Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves to death.

A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom’s robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.

 

 

 

3. Character Analysis

 (I choose the main character and others who impresses me most)

Tom Sawyer

When the novel begins, Tom is a mischievous child who envies Huck Finn’s lazy lifestyle and freedom. As Tom’s adventures proceed, however, critical moments show Tom moving away from his childhood concerns and making mature, responsible decisions. These moments include Tom’s testimony at Muff Potter’s trial, his saving of Becky from punishment, and his heroic navigation out of the cave. By the end of the novel, Tom is coaxing Huck into staying at the Widow Douglas’s, urging his friend to accept tight collars, Sunday school, and good table manners. He is no longer a disobedient character undermining the adult order, but a defender of respectability and responsibility. In the end, growing up for Tom means embracing social custom and sacrificing the freedoms of childhood.

Yet Tom’s development isn’t totally coherent. The novel jumps back and forth among several narrative strands: Tom’s general misbehavior, which climaxes in theJackson’sIslandadventure; his courtship of Becky, which culminates in his acceptance of blame for the book that she rips; and his struggle with Injun Joe, which ends with Tom and Huck’s discovery of the treasure. Because of the picaresque, or episodic, nature of the plot, Tom’s character can seem inconsistent, as it varies depending upon his situation. Tom is a paradoxical figure in some respects—for example, he has no determinate age. Sometimes Tom shows the naïveté of a smaller child, with his interest in make-believe and superstitions. On the other hand, Tom’s romantic interest in Becky and his fascination with Huck’s smoking and drinking seem more the concerns of an adolescent.

Huckleberry Finn

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain created a character who exemplifies freedom within, and from, American society. Huck lives on the margins of society because, as the son of the town drunk, he is pretty much an orphan. He sleeps where he pleases, provided that nobody chases him off, and he eats when he pleases, provided that he can find a morsel. No one requires him to attend school or church, bathe, or dress respectably. It is understandable, if not expected, that Huck smokes and swears. Years of having to fend for himself have invested Huck with a solid common sense and a practical competence that complement Tom’s dreamy idealism and fantastical approach to reality (Tom creates worlds for himself that are based on those in stories he has read). But Huck does have two traits in common with Tom: a zest for adventure and a belief in superstition.

Through Huck, Twain weighs the costs and benefits of living in a society against those of living independently of society. For most of the novel, adult society disapproves of Huck, but because Twain renders Huck such a likable boy, the adults’ disapproval of Huck generally alienates us from them and not from Huck himself. After Huck saves the Widow Douglas and gets rich, the scale tips in the direction of living in society. But Huck, unlike Tom, isn’t convinced that the exchange of freedom for stability is worth it. He has little use for the money he has found and is quite devoted to his rough, independent lifestyle. When the novel ends, Huck, like Tom, is still a work in progress, and we aren’t sure whether the Widow Douglas’s attempts to civilize him will succeed (Twain reserves the conclusion of Huck’s story for his later novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

Injun Joe

Injun Joe is Tom Sawyer’s villain. His actions are motivated, from beginning to end, by unadulterated malevolence. When Injun Joe explains his motivation for revenge against Dr. Robinson and later against the Widow Douglas, we see that his personal history involves others mistreating and excluding him. Yet the disproportion between the wrongs Injun Joe has suffered—at least as he enumerates them—and the level of vengeance he hopes to exact is so extreme that we aren’t tempted to excuse his behavior. In contrast, Muff Potter’s misdeeds are inconsequential compared to the punishment he stands to receive. One might also compare Injun Joe to Sid: both are motivated by malice, which they paper over with a convincing performance of innocence.

Though his appearance changes when he disguises himself as a deaf and mute Spaniard, Injun Joe undergoes no real character development over the course of the novel. He never seems to repent for his crimes or change his spiteful outlook. His reappearances in different parts of the novel help to provide a thread of continuity, as they bring the murder-case plot, the treasure-hunt plot, and the adventures-in-the-cave plots together into a single narrative. Injun Joe’s presence also adds suspense to the novel, because we have very little sense of whether Tom and Huck’s constant fear that Injun Joe will hurt them has any basis in reality.

 

Aunt Polly 

Tom’s aunt and guardian. Aunt Polly is a simple, kindhearted woman who struggles to balance her love for her nephew with her duty to discipline him. She generally fails in her attempts to keep Tom under control because, although she worries about Tom’s safety, she seems to fear constraining him too much. Above all, Aunt Polly wants to be appreciated and loved.

4. Comment:

 Moral and Social Maturation

When the novel opens, Tom is engaged in and often the organizer of childhood pranks and make-believe games. As the novel progresses, these initially consequence-free childish games take on more and more gravity. Tom leads himself, Joe Harper, Huck, and, in the cave, Becky Thatcher into increasingly dangerous situations. He also finds himself in predicaments in which he must put his concern for others above his concern for himself, such as when he takes Becky’s punishment and when he testifies at Injun Joe’s trial. As Tom begins to take initiative to help others instead of himself, he shows his increasing maturity, competence, and moral integrity.

Tom’s adventures toJackson’sIslandand McDougal’s Cave take him away from society. These symbolic removals help to prepare him to return to the village with a new, more adult outlook on his relationship to the community. Though early on Tom looks up to Huck as much older and wiser, by the end of the novel, Tom’s maturity has surpassed Huck’s. Tom’s personal growth is evident in his insistence, in the face of Huck’s desire to flee all social constraints, that Huck stay with the Widow Douglas and become civilized.

Society’s Hypocrisy

Twain complicates Tom’s position on the border between childhood and adulthood by ridiculing and criticizing the values and practices of the adult world toward which Tom is heading. Twain’s harshest satire exposes the hypocrisy—and often the essential childishness—of social institutions such as school, church, and the law, as well as public opinion. He also mocks individuals, although when doing so he tends to be less biting and focuses on flaws of character that we understand to be universal.

Twain shows that social authority does not always operate on wise, sound, or consistent principles and that institution fall prey to the same kinds of mistakes that individuals do. In his depiction of families, he shows parental authority and constraint balanced by parental love and indulgence. Though she attempts to restrain and punish Tom, Aunt Polly always relents because of her love for her nephew. As the novel proceeds, a similar tendency toward indulgence becomes apparent within the broader community as well. The community shows its indulgence when Tom’s dangerous adventures provoke an outpouring of concern: the community is perfectly ready to forgive Tom’s wrongs if it can be sure of his safety. Twain ridicules the ability of this collective tendency toward generosity and forgiveness to go overboard when he describes the town’s sentimental forgiveness of the villainous Injun Joe after his death.

Freedom through Social Exclusion

St. Petersburgis an insular community in which outsiders are easily identified. The most notable local outsiders include Huck Finn, who fends for himself outside of any family structure because his father is a drunkard; Muff Potter, also a drunk; and Injun Joe, a malevolent half-breed. Despite the community’s clear separation of outsiders from insiders, however, it seems to have a strong impulse toward inclusiveness. The community tolerates the drunkenness of a harmless rascal like Muff Potter, and Huck is more or less protected even though he exists on the fringes of society. Tom too is an orphan who has been taken in by Aunt Polly out of love and filial responsibility. Injun Joe is the only resident ofSt. Petersburgwho is completely excluded from the community. Only after Injun Joe’s death are the townspeople able to transform him, through their manipulation of his memory, into a tolerable part ofSt. Petersburgsociety.

Superstition in an Uncertain World

Twain first explores superstition in the graveyard, where Tom and Huck go to try out a magical cure for warts. From this point forward, superstition becomes an important element in all of the boys’ decision-making. The convenient aspect of Tom and Huck’s superstitious beliefs is that there are so many of them, and they are so freely interpretable; Tom and Huck can pick and choose whichever belief suits their needs at the time. In this regard, Twain suggests, superstition bears a resemblance to religion—at least as the populace ofSt. Petersburgpractices it.

The humorousness of the boys’ obsession with witches, ghosts, and graveyards papers over, to some extent, the real horror of the circumstances to which the boys are exposed: grave digging, murder, starvation, and attempted mutilation. The relative ease with which they assimilate these ghastly events into their childish world is perhaps one of the least realistic aspects of the novel. (If the novel were written today, we might expect to read about the psychic damage these extreme childhood experiences have done to these boys.) The boys negotiate all this horror because they exist in a world suspended somewhere between reality and make-believe. Their fear of death is real and pervasive, for example, but we also have the sense that they do not really understand death and all of its ramifications.

5 Conclusions

I believe that one of the factors that makes a piece of literature or even a movie a masterpiece is how well the reader can relate to the story. This is definitely a book everyone can relate to.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a literary masterpiece, written in 1876 by the famous author Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer is a mischievous young boy who lives in the small town on the Mississippi River calledSt. Petersburg. The story line is simple, the book reads like a biography or a memoir of a summer in Tom Sawyer’s life.

Tom Sawyer seems to be the precursor of and the template for misfit kids such as Dennis the Menace, Malcolm in the Middle, and Calvin andHobbs. What makes this story great is that Tom Sawyer represents everything that is great about childhood. The book is filled with Tom’s adventures playing pirates and war with his friend Joe Harper. Tom has a trusted friend, Huck Finn, who few of the adults approve of. The book is filled with ideas of how the world works, such as how pirates and robbers work, that are so innocent, and they could only come from a child. It is a story filled with action, adventure, ingenious ideas, love, and schoolyard politics. The whole story is seemingly a complication of what people did or wish they did during their childhood.

The book is a little difficult to read at first. Personally, it takes me a little while to get used to the 19th century dialect in the book. Other than referring to persons of African descent in derogatory terms (which I’m sure uses terms even young children already know), the book would be an enjoyable read for people of all ages. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to feel young again, if just for a few hundred pages.

Concerned with Tom’s personal growth and quest for identity, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer incorporates several different genres. It resembles a bildungsroman, a novel that follows the development of a hero from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. The novel also resembles novels of the picaresque genre, in that Tom moves from one adventurous episode to another. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer also fits the genres of satire, frontier literature, folk narrative, and comedy.