The Adventures of Tom SawyerIntroduction

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Mark Twain's publication in 1876 of his popular novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer reversed a

brief downturn in his success following the publication of his previous novel, The Gilded Age. Twain

wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer while he and his family were living in Hartford, Connecticut,

and while Twain was enjoying his fame. The novel, which tells of the escapades of a young boy and

his friends in St. Petersburg, Missouri, a village near the Mississippi River, recalls Twain's own

childhood in a small Missouri town. The friendship of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn is one of the most

celebrated in American literature, built on imaginative adventures, shared superstitions, and loyalty

that rises above social convention. Twain's American reading audience loved this novel and its

young hero, and the novel remains one of the most popular and famous works of American

literature. The novel and its characters have achieved folk hero status in the American popular

imagination.

Scenes such as Tom Sawyer tricking his friends into whitewashing Aunt Polly's fence for him, Injun

Joe leaping through the window of the courthouse after Tom names him as Dr. Robinson's murderer,

and Tom and Becky lost in the cave have become so familiar to American readers that one almost

doesn't have to read the book to know about them. But the pleasure of readingThe Adventures of

Tom Sawyer has kept readers coming back to the novel for over a century.

Beyond the fact that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is fun to read, there is another reason for the

novel's contemporary popularity: It introduces the character of Huckleberry Finn, who, with the

publication of Twain's 1884 novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, would become one of the

greatest characters in American literature.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain

The following entry presents criticism on Twain's novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). See

also The Mysterious Stranger Criticism, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Criticism, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Criticism.

Along with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer remains

Twain's best known and most widely read work. Depicting the life of a young boy growing up in a

Mississippi river town, the novel was regarded as an entertainment for children when it was originally

published. Since that time, Tom Sawyer has come to be viewed as a complex work addressed to

both children and adults.

Plot and Major Characters

Loosely based on Twain's own childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, Tom Sawyer relates the exploits of

its adolescent hero over the course of a summer in the fictional Mississippi valley town of St.

Petersburg. Tom is presented as a mischievous child who delights in such boyish pranks as stealing

jam from his Aunt Polly's kitchen, getting into fights with neighborhood boys, and tricking other

children into doing his chores. After establishing Tom's rebellious personality in the opening chapter,

the novel relates his various adventures in an episodic fashion that weaves several storylines

together. Twain emphasizes the trials and misadventures of ordinary childhood through Tom's many

escapades at school and his courting of Becky Thatcher, the daughter of a local judge. These

everyday events contrast with the romanticized and extraordinary adventures that Tom shares with

his friend Huckleberry Finn. During a midnight excursion to the town graveyard, Tom and Huck

witness the murder of Dr. Robinson by Injun Joe, and Tom must later testify in court to save the life

of Muff Potter, who has wrongfully been charged with the crime. At another point in the story, Tom

and Huck run away to Jackson's Island, a peaceful, wooded island in the middle of the Mississippi,

only to be driven by homesickness back to St. Petersburg, where the townspeople, presuming them

to have drowned, have organized their funeral. The climax of the book involves Tom and Becky

Thatcher becoming lost in McDougal's Cave. Tom finds a way out after three days of searching, and

emerges from the cave a town hero. The story closes with the discovery of Injun Joe's body and the

bestowal on Tom and Huck of a vast treasure left behind by the villain.

Major Themes

In his preface to Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain asserted: "Although my book is intended mainly for the

entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for

part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves and

of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in."

Commentators such as Diana Trilling and Louis D. Rubin, Jr., have affirmed the success of Twain's

design. While the more melodramatic plotlines involving the murder of Dr. Robinson, the discovery of

hidden treasure, and the adventure in McDougal's Cave serve to entertain a younger body of

readers, such incidents as the fence whitewashing episode and Tom's "treatment" of the family cat

with an intoxicating painkiller are cited as canny portrayals of the nature of childhood. Other critics,

notably John Seelye, view several incidents in the novel, including Tom's encounters with Injun Joe

and Tom and Becky's disappearance in the cave, as confrontations between innocence and evil

which initiate Tom into the world of adult responsibilities and consequences. Commentators also

contrast Tom's initial resistance to the social order of St. Petersburg with his later acceptance of a

prominent place among the wealthy townspeople and his final efforts to "civilize" Huck as evidence

that Tom develops from a romantic who shuns the demands of adulthood into a more practical

character who is able to achieve maturity without losing his individuality and playfulness. It has also

been observed that the novel burlesques the conventions of romantic fiction through Tom's

playacting at heroic roles and his pining for Becky Thatcher, while the motif of Tom as a young hero

who achieves success despite his mischievousness pokes fun at the didactic fiction popular in

Twain's day, which portrayed unrealistically pious children whose exemplary behavior ensures their

eventual material success. Although its reputation has suffered from comparisons to its highly

acclaimed sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, most critics agree with Barry Marks's

assessment: "Its capacity still to appeal to the modern reader lies, I think, in the quality to which

Mark Twain referred in calling it a hymn. Inherent in its structure is a song praising mankind—

praising his weakness and need for love and security as well as his strength and capacity for

achievement, but mostly praising the life which permits man's conflicting motives to exist together in

ultimate harmony."

Summary

Tom Sawyer lives securely with the knowledge that his Aunt Polly loves him dearly. When she

scolds him or whips him, he knows that inside her breast lurks a hidden remorse. Often he deserves

the punishment he receives, but there are times when he is the victim of his tattletale half brother,

Sid. Tom’s cousin Mary is kinder to him. Her worst duty toward him is to see to it that he washes and

puts on clean clothes, so that he will look respectable when Aunt Polly takes the children to Sunday

school.

When a new family moves into town, Tom sees a pretty, blue-eyed girl with lacy pantalettes.

Instantly the fervent love he has felt for Amy Lawrence flees from his faithless bosom, replaced by

devotion to this new girl. At Sunday school, Tom learns that her name is Becky Thatcher. She is in

school the next day, sitting on the girls’ side of the room with an empty seat beside her. Tom comes

late to school that morning. When the schoolmaster asks Tom why he is late, the empty seat beside

Becky catches his eye. Recklessly he confesses he stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn, son of the

town drunk. Huck wears cast-off clothing, never attends school, smokes and fishes as often as he

pleases, and sleeps wherever he can. For associating with Huckleberry Finn, Tom is whipped by the

schoolmaster and ordered to sit on the girls’ side of the room. Amid the snickers of the entire class,

he takes the empty seat next to Becky.

ThemesThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer introduces several significant figures in American mythology,

including the hero of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the central works of American

literature. Nonetheless, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is not just a dress rehearsal for its more

powerful sequel. Allowing for nineteenth-century conventions of language and sentimentality in

literature for young adults, the novel retains vitality and humor in exploring questions of freedom and

responsibility. Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book presents limitation, alienation, and

horror as elements profoundly affecting a small Missouri town's young people, whose minds are

shaped as much by superstition, romantic fiction, and nightmare visions as by social convention. It

also resembles The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in showing a painful moral growth that demands

the risk of one's own welfare to assist another, while at the same time treating the reader to

outlandish humor, melodramatic action, and a happy ending.

haracters Discussed (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Revised Third Edition)Tom Sawyer

Tom Sawyer, the mischievous ringleader of countless boyish adventures, who almost drives his

long-suffering aunt to distraction with his pranks. When not fighting with other village urchins, the

indolent boy plans numerous romantic and impractical escapades, many of which cost him hours of

conscience-stricken torment. If he is not planning misdemeanors on the high seas, he is looking for

buried treasure. Although unthinking, he is not really a bad boy; he is capable of generosity and

occasionally surprises even himself with magnanimous acts.

Aunt Polly

Aunt Polly, Tom’s warm, tenderhearted aunt. Sometimes this simple scripture-quoting old soul does

not understand her mischievous charge. She uses Tom’s brother Sid as an example of a model

youth. Her frequent admonitions, emphasized by repeated thumps on the head with a thimble, fail to

have a lasting effect on Tom. Believing herself endowed with subtle guile, she often tries to trap the

boy into admitting his pranks. Rarely, however, is she successful. Tom usually manages to outwit

her if Sid does not call her attention to certain inexactnesses in Tom’s excuses.

Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn, one of Tom’s best friends and a social pariah to the village mothers, but not to

their sons. In the self-sufficient outcast, the boys see everything they want to be. They long for his

freedom to do as he pleases.