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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Frontispiece of 1st edition |
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| Author | Mark Twain |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | True Williams |
| Cover artist | created by Mark Twain |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Bildungsroman, Picaresque, Satire, Folk, Children's Novel |
| Publisher | American Publishing Company |
| Publication date | 1876 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 275pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is a popular 1876 novel about a young boy growing up in the Antebellum South on the Mississippi River in St. Petersburg, Missouri.
Tom Sawyer, a mischievous black haired orphan taken in by his Aunt Polly, goes through a series of adventures involving his friends, Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. Tom is an escape master, and a professional trickster. He escapes punishment many times by his tricks. Though he is often foolish and unpredictable, he also is somewhat smart and has a good sense of humor. When not trying to win his sweetheart, Becky Thatcher, Tom is either getting into mischief or going on an adventure. Many times, Tom suddenly changes from his grinning self into a fearsome pirate or Indian. His laugh changes into a bloodcurdling yell or a barking captain's voice. Tom Sawyer's main doings are racing bugs, impressing girls with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on the Mississippi River. The best known passage in the book describes how Sawyer persuades his friends to whitewash, or paint, a long fence for him.
The sales of Tom Sawyer were lukewarm at first. It initially sold less than a third as many copies as Twain's Innocents Abroad. By the time of Mark Twain's death, however, Tom Sawyer was both an American classic and a bestseller.
Tom Sawyer also appears in three other Mark Twain books:
Of these, Huckleberry Finn, in which Tom Sawyer is only a minor character, is considered to have by far the most literary merit.
An imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his cousin, 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 of St. 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.
The novel’s protagonist. Tom is a mischievous boy with an active imagination who spends most of the novel getting himself, and often his friends, into and out of trouble. Despite his mischief, Tom has a good heart and a strong moral conscience. As the novel progresses, he begins to take more seriously the responsibilities of his role as a leader among his schoolfellows. He is an active boy who is cunning and adventurous.
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.
The son of the town drunk. Huck is a juvenile outcast who is shunned by respectable society and adored by the local boys, who envy his freedom. Like Tom, Huck is highly superstitious, and both boys are always ready for an adventure.
Judge Thatcher’s pretty, yellow-haired daughter. From almost the minute she moves to town, Becky is the “Adored Unknown” who stirs Tom’s lively romantic sensibility. Naïve at first, Becky soon matches Tom as a romantic strategist, and the two go to great lengths to make each other jealous.
Tom’s “bosom friend” and frequent playmate. Joe is a typical best friend, a convention Twain parodies when he refers to Joe and Tom as “two souls with but a single thought.” Though Joe mostly mirrors Tom, he diverges from Tom’s example when he is the first of the boys to succumb to homesickness on Jackson’s Island. As the novel progresses, Huck begins to assume Joe’s place as Tom’s companion.
Tom’s half-brother. Sid is a goody-goody who enjoys getting Tom into trouble. He is mean-spirited but presents a superficial show of model behavior. He is thus the opposite of Tom, who is warmhearted but behaves badly. When Tom gets beaten for something that Sid did he doesn't say anything.
Tom’s sweet, almost saintly cousin. Mary holds a soft spot for Tom. Like Sid, she is well behaved, but unlike him, she acts out of genuine affection rather than malice.
A violent, villainous man who commits murder, becomes a robber, and plans to mutilate the Widow Douglas. Injun Joe’s predominant motivation is revenge. Half Native American and half Caucasian, he has suffered social exclusion, probably because of his race.
A hapless drunk and friend of Injun Joe. Potter is kind and grateful toward Tom and Huck, who bring him presents after he is wrongly jailed for Dr. Robinson’s murder. Potter’s naïve trust eventually pushes Tom’s conscience to the breaking point, compelling Tom to tell the truth at Potter’s trial about who actually committed the murder.
A respected local physician. Dr. Robinson shows his more sordid side on the night of his murder: he hires Injun Joe and Muff Potter to dig up Hoss Williams’s grave because he wants to use the corpse for medical experiments.
The minister of the town church.
A kindhearted, pious resident of St. Petersburg whom the the children recognize as a friend. Tom knows that the Widow Douglas will give him and Becky ice cream and let them sleep over. She is kind to Huck even before she learns that he saved her life.
A Welshman who lives with his sons near the Widow Douglas’s house. Mr. Jones responds to Huck’s alarm on the night that Injun Joe intends to attack the widow and he takes care of Huck in the aftermath.
Becky’s father, the county judge. A local celebrity, Judge Thatcher inspires the respect of all the townspeople. He takes responsibility for issues affecting the community as a whole, such as closing the cave for safety reasons and taking charge of the boys’ treasure money.
Aunt Polly’s young slave. He is a "negro". Jim was introduced for the first three chapters or so.
Tom’s former love. Tom abandons Amy when Becky Thatcher comes to town.
One of Tom’s friends, whom Tom persuades to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence. In the end of the book Ben ends up hating Tom for stealing his girl.
A well-dressed new boy in town. Like Amy Lawrence, Alfred gets caught in the crossfire of Tom and Becky’s love games, as Becky pretends to like him in order to make Tom jealous.
The somewhat ridiculous Sunday school superintendent. Because he aspires to please Judge Thatcher, Mr. Walters rewards Tom with a Bible, even though he knows that Tom hasn’t earned it.
The schoolmaster. Mr. Dobbins seems a slightly sad character: his ambition to be a medical doctor has been thwarted and he has become a heavy drinker and the butt of schoolboy pranks.
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 the Jackson’s Island adventure; 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. Whether or not a single course of development characterizes Tom’s adventures, a single character trait — Tom’s unflagging energy and thirst for adventure — propels the novel from episode to episode. Disobedient though he may be, Tom ends up as St. Petersburg’s hero. As the town gossips say, “[Tom] would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.”
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 nobody chases him off, and he eats when he pleases, provided 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 things 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 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.
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
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 where 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 to Jackson’s Island and 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.
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 institutions fall prey to the same kinds of mistakes that individuals do. In his depiction of families, Twain shows parental authority and constraint balanced by parental love and indulgence. Though she attempts to restrain and punish Tom, Aunt Polly always goes soft 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. The games the children play often seem like attempts to subvert authority and escape from conventional society. Skipping school, sneaking out at night, playing tricks on the teacher, and running away for days at a time are all ways of breaking the rules and defying authority. Yet, Twain shows us that these games can be more conventional than they seem. Tom is highly concerned with conforming to the codes of behavior that he has learned from reading, and he outlines the various criteria that define a pirate, a Robin Hood, or a circus clown. The boys’ obsession with superstition is likewise an addiction to convention, which also mirrors the adult society’s focus on religion. Thus, the novel shows that adult existence is more similar to childhood existence than it might seem. Though the novel is critical of society’s hypocrisy—that is, of the frequent discord between its values and its behavior—Twain doesn’t really advocate subversion. The novel demonstrates the potential dangers of subverting authority just as it demonstrates the dangers of adhering to authority too strictly.
St. Petersburg is 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 of St. Petersburg who 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 of St. Petersburg society. Huck’s exclusion means that many of the other children are not allowed to play with him. He receives no structured education and often does not even have enough to eat or a place to sleep. Twain minimizes these concerns, however, in favor of presenting the freedom that Huck’s low social status affords him. Huck can smoke and sleep outside and do all the things that the other boys dream of, with very little constraint. Huck’s windfall at the end of the novel, when the boys find the treasure, threatens to stifle his freedom. The Widow Douglas’s attentions force Huck to change his lifestyle, something Huck would probably never choose to do on his own. By linking Huck’s acquisition of the treasure with his assimilation into St. Petersburg society, Twain emphasizes the association between financial standing and social standing. Besides the obvious fact that money is an important ingredient in social acceptance, social existence clearly is itself a kind of economy, in which certain costs accompany certain benefits. The price of social inclusion is a loss of complete freedom.
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 thing about 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 of St. Petersburg practices it. The humorousness of the boys’ obsession with witches, ghosts, and graveyards papers over, to some extent, the real horror of the things 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.
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The many crimes committed in the novel range from minor childhood transgressions to capital offenses—from playing hooky to murder. The games the boys prefer center on crime as well, giving them a chance to explore the boldness and heroism involved in breaking social expectations without actually threatening the social order. The boys want to be pirates, robbers, and murderers even though they feel remorse when they actually commit the minor crime of stealing bacon. The two scenes in which Tom plays Robin Hood—who, in stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is both a criminal and a hero—are emblematic of how Tom associates crime with defending values and even altering the structure of society.
The children in the novel maintain an elaborate miniature economy in which they constantly trade amongst themselves treasures that would be junk to adults. These exchanges replicate the commercial relationships in which the children will have to engage when they get older. Many of the complications that money creates appear in their exchanges. Tom swindles his friends out of all their favorite objects through a kind of false advertising when he sells them the opportunity to whitewash the fence. He then uses his newly acquired wealth to buy power and prestige at Sunday school—rewards that should be earned rather than bought. When Tom and Joe fight over the tick in class, we see a case in which a disagreement leads the boys, who have been sharing quite civilly, to revert to a quarrel over ownership. The jump from this small-scale property holding at the beginning of the novel to the $12,000 treasure at the end is an extreme one. In spite of all Tom and Huck’s practice, their money is given to a responsible adult. With their healthy allowance, the boys can continue to explore their role as commercial citizens, but at a more moderate rate.
The boys mention again and again their admiration for the circus life and their desire to be clowns when they grow up. These references emphasize the innocence with which they approach the world. Rather than evaluate the real merits and shortcomings of the various occupations Tom and Huck could realistically choose, they like to imagine themselves in roles they find romantic or exciting.
Tom’s showing off is mostly directed toward Becky Thatcher. When he shows off initially, we guess that he literally prances around and does gymnastics. Later, the means by which Tom and Becky try to impress each other grow more subtle, as they manipulate Amy and Alfred in an effort to make each other jealous. In the Sunday school scene, Twain reveals that showing off is not strictly a childhood practice. The adults who are supposed to be authority figures in the church are so awed by Judge Thatcher and so eager to attract his attention and approval that they too begin to behave like children. The room devolves into an absolute spectacle of ridiculous behavior by children and adults alike, culminating in the public embarrassment in which Tom exposes his ignorance of the Bible.
Symbols are objects, characters, or other concrete representations of ideas, concepts, or other abstractions.
The cave represents a trial that Tom has to pass before he can graduate into maturity. Coming-of-age stories often involve tests in which the protagonist is separated from the rest of the society for a period of time and faces significant dangers or challenges. Only after having survived on the strength of his personal resources is Tom ready to rejoin society.
The storm on Jackson’s Island symbolizes the danger involved in the boys’ removal from society. It forms part of an interruptive pattern in the novel, in which periods of relative peace and tranquility alternate with episodes of high adventure or danger. Later, when Tom is sick, he believes that the storm hit to indicate that God’s wrath is directed at him personally. The storm thus becomes an external symbol of Tom’s conscience.
The treasure is a symbolic goal that marks the end of the boys’ journey. It becomes a indicator of Tom’s transition into adulthood and Huck’s movement into civilized society. It also symbolizes the boys’ heroism, marking them as exceptional in a world where conformity is the rule.
Many readers have interpreted the small village of St. Petersburg as a microcosm of the United States or of society in general. All of the major social institutions are present on a small scale in the village and all are susceptible to Twain’s comic treatment. The challenges and joys Tom encounters in the village are, in their basic structure, ones that he or any reader could expect to meet anywhere.
The story of Tom Sawyer has been filmed or animated multiple times during the past century. Some of the film adaptations of Twain's novel include:
- A 1907 silent version released by the Paramount studio
- A 1917 silent version directed by William Desmond Taylor, starring Jack Pickford as Tom
- A 1930 version directed by John Cromwell, starring Jackie Coogan as Tom
- In 1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was filmed in Technicolor by the Selznick Studio. It starred Tommy Kelly as Tom and was directed by Norman Taurog. Most notable was the cave sequence designed by William Cameron Menzies.
- A 1947 Soviet Union version, directed by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky
- A 1973 musical version with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, starring Johnny Whitaker as Tom and a young Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. There was also a TV movie version released that same year which starred Buddy Ebsen as Muff Potter.
- Tom Sawyer no Boken (1980), a Japanese anime TV series by Nippon Animation, part of the World Masterpiece Theater; aired in the United States on HBO
- A 1984 Canadian claymation version produced by Hal Roach studios
- Tom and Huck (1995), starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck Finn
- A 2000 animated adaptation, featuring the characters as animorphic animals with an all-star voice cast, including country singers Rhett Akins (as Tom), Mark Wills (as Huck Finn), Lee Ann Womack, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. as well as Betty White as Aunt Polly
In dictations for his autobiography, Twain claimed Tom Sawyer "must have been" the first book whose manuscript was typed on a typewriter. However, typewriter historian Darryl Rehr has concluded that Twain's first typed manuscript was Life on the Mississippi.[1]