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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (also simply known as Tom Sawyer) is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy.[2] In the novel, Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of Twain's works during his lifetime.[3][4] Though overshadowed by its 1884 sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature.[5] It was one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.[citation needed]

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Front piece of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876, 1st edition
AuthorMark Twain
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreBildungsroman, picaresque novel, satire, folk, children's literature
PublisherAmerican Publishing Company
Publication date
1876[1]
OCLC47052486
813.4
LC ClassPZ7.T88 Ad 2001
Followed byAdventures of Huckleberry Finn 
TextThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Wikisource

Plot edit

 
Tom Sawyer, 1972 US commemorative stamp showing the whitewashed fence
 
Tom and Becky lost in the caves. Illustration from the 1876 edition by artist True Williams.

Tom Sawyer is an orphan who lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, sometime in the 1840s. A fun-loving boy, he frequently skips school to play or go swimming. When Aunt Polly catches him sneaking home late on a Friday evening and discovers that he has been in a fight, she makes him whitewash her fence the next day as punishment.

Tom cleverly persuades several neighborhood children to trade him small trinkets and treasures for the "privilege" of doing his tedious work, using reverse psychology to convince them of its enjoyable nature. Later, Tom trades the trinkets with students in his Sunday school class for tickets, given out for memorizing verses of Scripture. He collects enough tickets to earn a prized Bible from the teacher, despite being one of the worst students in the class and knowing almost nothing of Scripture, eliciting envy from the students and a mixture of pride and shock from the adults.

Tom falls in love with a girl named Becky Thatcher, who is new in town and the daughter of a prominent judge. Tom wins the admiration of Judge Thatcher in the church by obtaining the Bible as a prize, but reveals his ignorance when he is unable to answer basic questions about Scripture. Tom pursues Becky, eventually persuading her to get "engaged" by kissing her. Their romance soon collapses when she discovers that Tom was "engaged" to another schoolgirl, Amy Lawrence.

Shortly after Becky spurns Tom, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn, a vagrant boy whom all the other boys admire, to a graveyard at midnight to perform a superstitious ritual intended to heal warts. At the graveyard, they witness a trio of body snatchers, Dr. Robinson, Muff Potter and Injun Joe, robbing a grave. A fight breaks out, during which Robinson knocks Potter unconscious and is then murdered by Injun Joe. When Potter wakes up, Injun Joe puts the weapon in his hand and tells him that he killed Robinson while drunk. Tom and Huck swear a blood oath not to tell anyone about the murder, fearing that Injun Joe will find out and kill them for revenge. Potter is arrested and jailed to await trial, not disputing Injun Joe's claim.

Tom grows bored with school, and he, his friend/classmate Joe Harper, and Huck run away to Jackson's Island in the Mississippi River to begin life as "pirates". While enjoying their freedom, they become aware that the community is scouring the river for their bodies, as the boys are missing and presumed dead. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion and, after a brief moment of remorse at his loved ones' suffering, conceives a plan to appear at his own funeral. The trio later carries out this scheme, making a sensational and sudden appearance at church in the middle of their joint funeral service, winning the immense respect of their classmates for the stunt. Back in school, Becky rips a page in the school master's anatomy book after Tom startles her, but Tom regains her admiration by claiming responsibility for the damage and accepting the punishment that would have been hers.

During Potter's murder trial, Tom breaks his oath with Huck and testifies for the defense, identifying Injun Joe as the actual culprit. Injun Joe flees the courtroom before he can be apprehended; Potter is acquitted, but Tom and Huck now live in constant fear for their lives.

Once school lets out for the summer, Tom and Huck decide to hunt for buried treasure in the area. While investigating an abandoned house, they are interrupted by the arrival of two men; one of them is a Spaniard, supposedly deaf-mute, whom the boys recognize as Injun Joe in disguise. He and his partner plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own in the house, but inadvertently discover a large hoard of gold coins while doing so. They decide to move it to a new hiding place, which Tom and Huck are determined to find. One night, Huck follows the men and overhears them planning to break into the home of the wealthy Widow Douglas so Injun Joe can mutilate her face in revenge for being publicly whipped for vagrancy − a punishment handed down by her late husband, a justice of the peace. Huck summons help and thus prevents the break-in, but asks that his name not be made public for fear of retaliation by Injun Joe.

Shortly before Huck stops the crime, Tom goes on a picnic to a local cave with Becky and their classmates. Tom and Becky become lost and wander in the cave for several days, facing starvation and dehydration. Becky becomes extremely dehydrated and weak, and Tom's search for a way out grows more desperate. He encounters Injun Joe by chance, but is not seen. He eventually finds an exit, and he and Becky are joyfully welcomed back to town, learning that they have been missing for three days and traveled five miles from the entrance. Judge Thatcher has the cave's entrance door reinforced and locked. When Tom hears of this action two weeks later, he is horror-stricken, knowing that Injun Joe is still inside. He directs a posse to the cave, where they find Injun Joe dead of starvation just inside the entrance.

A week later, having deduced from Injun Joe's presence that the stolen gold must be hidden in the cave, Tom takes Huck there in search of it. They find the gold, which totals over $12,000 (equivalent to $377,000 in 2022) and is invested on their behalf. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, but he finds the restrictions of a civilized home life painful, attempting to escape back to his vagrant life. He reluctantly returns to the widow, persuaded by Tom's offer to form a high-class robber gang.

Significance edit

The novel has elements of humor, satire and social criticism – features that later made Mark Twain one of the most important authors of American literature. Mark Twain describes some autobiographical events in the book. The novel's setting of St. Petersburg is based on Twain's actual boyhood home of Hannibal, near St. Louis, and many of the places in it are real and today support a tourist industry as a result.[6]

The concept of boyhood is developed through Tom's actions, including his runaway adventure with Joe and Huckleberry. To help show how mischievous and messy boyhood was, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs shows a picture of a young boy smoking a pipe, sawing furniture, climbing all over the place, and sleeping. In Twain's novel, Tom and his friend are young when they decide they want to learn how to smoke a pipe. Tom and Joe do this to show just how cool they are to the other boys.[7]

Inception edit

Tom Sawyer is Twain's first attempt to write a novel on his own. He had previously written contemporary autobiographical narratives (The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress, Roughing It) and two short texts called sketches which parody the youth literature of the time. These are The Story of the Good Boy and The Story of the Wicked Little Boy which are satirical texts of a few pages. In the first, a model child is never rewarded and ends up dying before he can declaim his last words which he has carefully prepared. In the second story, an evil little boy steals and lies, like Tom Sawyer, but finishes rich and successful. Tom appears as a mixture of these little boys since he is at the same time a scamp and a boy endowed with a certain generosity.

By the time he wrote Tom Sawyer, Twain was already a successful author based on the popularity of The Innocents Abroad. He owned a large house in Hartford, Connecticut but needed another success to support himself, with a wife and two daughters. He had collaborated on a novel with Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age published in 1874.[8]

He had earlier written an unpublished memoir of his own life on the Mississippi and had corresponded with a boyhood friend, Will Bowen, both of which had evoked many memories and were used as source material.

Twain named his fictional character after a San Francisco fireman whom he met in June 1863. The real Tom Sawyer was a local hero, famous for rescuing 90 passengers after a shipwreck. The two remained friendly during Twain's three-year stay in San Francisco, often drinking and gambling together.[9]

Publication edit

 
Frontispiece and title page of the first American edition

In November 1875 Twain gave the manuscript to Elisha Bliss of the American Publishing Company, who sent it to True Williams for the illustrations. A little later, Twain had the text also quickly published at Chatto and Windus of London, in June 1876, but without illustration. Pirate editions appeared very quickly in Canada and Germany. The American Publishing Company finally published its edition in December 1876, which was the first illustrated edition of Tom Sawyer.[10]

These two editions differ slightly. After completing his manuscript, Twain had a copy made of it. It is this copy which was read and annotated by his friend William Dean Howells. Howells and Twain corresponded through fairly informal, handwritten letters discussing many aspects of his works and manuscripts; language choices, character development, as well as racial development and depiction. Twain then made his own corrections based on Howells' comments which he later incorporated in the original manuscript, but some corrections escaped him. The English edition was based on this corrected copy, while the illustrated American edition was based on the original manuscript. To further complicate matters, Twain was personally concerned with the revision of the proofs of the American edition, which he did not do for the English edition. The American edition is therefore considered the authoritative edition.

Criticism edit

A third person narrator describes the experiences of the boys, interspersed with occasional social commentary. In its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain changes to a first person narrative which takes moral conflicts more personally and thus makes greater social criticism possible.[11] The two other subsequent books, Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, are similarly in the first person narrative from the perspective of Huckleberry Finn.

The book has raised controversy for its use of the racial epithet "nigger"; a bowdlerized version aroused indignation among some literary critics.[12]

The book has been criticized for its caricature-like portrayal of Native Americans through the character Injun Joe. He is depicted as malevolent for the sake of malevolence, is not allowed to redeem himself in any way by Twain, dies a pitiful and despairing death in a cave and upon his death is treated as a tourist attraction. Revard suggests that the adults in the novel blame the character's Indian blood as the cause of his evil.[13]

Sequels and other works featuring Tom Sawyer edit

Tom Sawyer, the story's title character, also appears in two other uncompleted sequels: Huck and Tom Among the Indians and Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy. He is also a character in Twain's unfinished Schoolhouse Hill.

Adaptations and influences edit

Film and television edit

Music edit

  • "Tom Sawyer" is a song by Canadian rock band Rush, originally released on their 1981 album Moving Pictures as its opener.

Theatrical edit

  • From 1932 to 1933, German philosopher Theodor Adorno adapted The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a ballad opera titled Der Schatz des Indianer-Joe (Treasure of Joe, the Indian). He never finished the musical accompaniment. The libretto was published by his wife Gretel Adorno and student Rolf Tiedemann in 1979.[30]
  • In 1956, We're From Missouri, a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with book, music, and lyrics by Tom Boyd, was presented by the students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
  • In 1960, Tom Boyd's musical version (re-titled Tom Sawyer) was presented professionally at Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, England, and in 1961 toured provincial theatres in England.[31][32]
  • In 1981, the play The Boys in Autumn by the American dramatist Bernhard Sabath premiered in San Francisco. In the play, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meet again as old men. Despite good reviews, the play has remained largely unknown.[33]
  • In the 1985 musical Big River by William Hauptman and Roger Miller, Tom is a secondary character, played by John Short from 1985 to 1987.
  • In 2001, the musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Ken Ludwig and Don Schlitz, debuted on Broadway.[34]
  • In 2015, the Mark Twain House and Museum selected 17-year-old Noah Altshuler (writer of Making the Move), as Mark Twain Playwright in Residence, to create a modern, meta-fictional adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for regional and commercial production.[35]

Ballet edit

Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts premiered on October 14, 2011, at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri. The score was by composer Maury Yeston, with choreography by William Whitener, artistic director of the Kansas City Ballet.[36][37] A review in The New York Times observed: "It’s quite likely that this is the first all-new, entirely American three-act ballet: it is based on an American literary classic, has an original score by an American composer and was given its premiere by an American choreographer and company. ... Both the score and the choreography are energetic, robust, warm, deliberately naïve (both ornery and innocent), in ways right for Twain."[38]

Comic books edit

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been adapted into comic book form many times:

Video games edit

Internet edit

On November 30, 2011, to celebrate Twain's 176th birthday, the Google Doodle was a scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.[41]

Theme park attractions edit

An opening day attraction at Six Flags Over Mid America (Now Six Flags St Louis) was Injun Joe's Cave which told the story of Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher as they escaped from Injun Joe after his murdering of Dr. Robinson. The attraction was open until 1978 when it was replaced with "The Time Tunnel." To this day, the building that housed this former attraction is home to "Justice League Battle for Metropolis.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Facsimile of the original 1st edition.
  2. ^ "American Literature: Mark Twain". www.americanliterature.com. Retrieved 29 January 2015.
  3. ^ Railton, Stephen. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Mark Twain in His Times. University of Virginia. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  4. ^ Messent, Peter (2007). The Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139462273. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  5. ^ "United States History: Mark Twain". Retrieved 28 February 2019.
  6. ^ Norkunas, Martha K. (1993). The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History, and Ethnicity in Monterey, California. SUNY Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0791414842.
  7. ^ "Leedle Yawcob Strauss". THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS. L. Prang & Co. Retrieved 15 May 2019.
  8. ^ Gailey, Amanda (June 2013). "The Gilded Age : A Tale of Today". Encyclopedia of American Literature. ISBN 9781438140773.
  9. ^ Graysmith, Robert (October 2012). . Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on November 7, 2013. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
  10. ^ Twain, Mark (1967). Hill, Hamlin Lewis (ed.). Mark Twain's Letters to his Publishers 1867-1894. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520005600. tom sawyer chatto and windus 1876.
  11. ^ Groß-Langenhoff, Barbara (2006). Social Criticism in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. GRIN Verlag. ISBN 978-3638456821.
  12. ^ "Opinion | That's Not Twain". The New York Times. 2011. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-18.
  13. ^ Revard, Carter (1999). "Why Mark Twain Murdered Injun Joe: And Will Never Be Indicted". The Massachusetts Review. 40 (4): 643–670. JSTOR 25091596.
  14. ^ . Archived from the original on 2012-02-07.
  15. ^ "Tom Sawyer (1930)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  16. ^ "Tom Sawyer (1936)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  17. ^ "THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (1938)". tcm.com. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  18. ^ "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1960– )". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  19. ^ "Les aventur Sawyer (1968– )". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  20. ^ "The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968–1969)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  21. ^ "Aventuras de Juliancito (1969)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  22. ^ "Tom Sawyer (1973)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  23. ^ "Tom Sawyer (TV 1973)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  24. ^ "Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (1979– )". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  25. ^ Mark Deming (2009). . Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 29, 2009. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  26. ^ "Tom and Huck (1995)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  27. ^ "The Animated Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  28. ^ "Tom Sawyer (Video 2000)". IMDB. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  29. ^ "Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (2014)". IMDB. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  30. ^ Adorno, Theodor (1979). Tiedemann, Rolf (ed.). Schatz des Indianer-Joe (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
  31. ^ "TOM SAWYER - London production". www.tomboyd.net. Retrieved 2016-08-13.
  32. ^ Frankos, Laura (2010-01-01). The Broadway Musical Quiz Book. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 267. ISBN 9781423492757.
  33. ^ Rich, Frank (1986-05-01). "THEATER: 'THE BOYS IN AUTUMN'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-10-02.
  34. ^ Weber, Bruce (2001-04-27). "THEATER REVIEW; An Older (and Calmer) Tom Sawyer". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-10-02.
  35. ^ Giola, Michael (March 24, 2015). "Could a 17-Year-Old Bring Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" Back to Broadway?". Playbill.
  36. ^ Horsley, Paul. "An American Ballet: KCB Presents World Premiere Of Ambitious New Piece" Archived 2013-01-27 at archive.today, KCIndependent.com, accessed June 23, 2012
  37. ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Maury Yeston's Tom Sawyer Ballet Will Get World Premiere in 2011" 2010-11-12 at the Wayback Machine, Playbill.com, November 9, 2012
  38. ^ Macaulay, Alastair. "Yes, Those Are Tom, Becky and Huck Leaping", NYTimes.com, October 24, 2011,
  39. ^ Inge, M. Thomas. "Comics", The Mark Twain Encyclopedia. Ed. J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson. (New York: Garland, 1993), pp. 168-71.
  40. ^ Manga Classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2018) UDON Entertainment ISBN 978-1947808027
  41. ^ "Mark Twain's 176th Birthday", google.com, November 30, 2011

Further reading edit

  • Beaver, Harold, et al., eds. "The role of structure in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." Huckleberry Finn. Vol. 1. No. 8. (Johns Hopkins Textual Studies, 1987) pp. 1–57.
  • Beringer, Alex. "Humbug History: The Politics of Puffery in Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy." Mark Twain Annual 14.1 (2016): 114–126. Online
  • Blair, Walter. "On the Structure of" Tom Sawyer"." Modern Philology 37.1 (1939): 75-88.
  • Bonilla, Joe Montenegro. "The American Past and Present: A New Historicist Approach to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." Letras 2.64 (2018): 109-129. online
  • Buchen, Callista. "Writing the Imperial Question at Home: Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians Revisited." Mark Twain Annual 9 (2011): 111–129. online
  • Caron, James E. "The Arc of Mark Twain's Satire, or Tom Sawyer the Moral Snag." American Literary Realism 51.1 (2018): 36–58. Online[dead link]
  • Dadjo, Servais Dieu-Donné Yédia. "Analysing Linguistic Stylistic Devices in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and So Long a Letter: A Comparative Appraisal." International Journal of English Linguistics 12.2 (2022). online
  • Dillingham, William B. "Setting and Theme in Tom Sawyer." Mark Twain Journal 12.2 (1964): 6-8 online.
  • Girsang, Martina, et al. "Exploring the Language Usage in Mark Twain’s Novel “Adventures of Tom Sawyer”: Hegemonic Masculinity Analysis." REiLA: Journal of Research and Innovation in Language 4.2 (2022): 197-208. online
  • Gribben, Alan. "Tom Sawyer, Tom Canty, and Huckleberry Finn: The Boy Book and Mark Twain." Mark Twain Journal 55.1/2 (2017): 127-144 online
  • Hill, Hamlin L. "The Composition and the Structure of Tom Sawyer." American Literature 32.4 (1961): 379-392 online.
  • Kenny, Neil. "of Literature on Beliefs The Example of Injun Joe in Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer." in Reading Beyond the Code: Literature and Relevance Theory (2018): 73+ online.
  • Roberts, James L. CliffsNotes Twain's The adventures of Tom Sawyer (2001) online free to borrow
  • Simpson, Claude Mitchell, ed. Twentieth century interpretations of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: a collection of critical essays (Prentice Hall, 1968).
  • Tibbetts, John C., And James M, Welsh, eds. The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film (2005) pp 3–5.
  • Towers, Tom H. "I Never Thought We Might Want to Come Back": Strategies of Transcendence in" Tom Sawyer." Modern Fiction Studies 21.4 (1975): 509-520 online.
  • West, Mark I. "Playing Pirates with Tom Sawyer: The Intersection of Reader-Response Theory and Play Theory." The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children's Literature 20.1 (2017). online

External links edit

  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Standard Ebooks
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Project Gutenberg
  •   The Adventures of Tom Sawyer public domain audiobook at LibriVox
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The digitized copy of the first American edition from Internet Archive (1876).
  • First edition illustrations by True Williams 2017-07-20 at the Wayback Machine

adventures, sawyer, also, simply, known, sawyer, 1876, novel, mark, twain, about, growing, along, mississippi, river, 1840s, town, petersburg, which, based, hannibal, missouri, where, twain, lived, novel, sawyer, several, adventures, often, with, friend, huckl. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer also simply known as Tom Sawyer is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy growing up along the Mississippi River It is set in the 1840s in the town of St Petersburg which is based on Hannibal Missouri where Twain lived as a boy 2 In the novel Tom Sawyer has several adventures often with his friend Huckleberry Finn Originally a commercial failure the book ended up being the best selling of Twain s works during his lifetime 3 4 Though overshadowed by its 1884 sequel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature 5 It was one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter citation needed The Adventures of Tom SawyerFront piece of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876 1st editionAuthorMark TwainCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishGenreBildungsroman picaresque novel satire folk children s literaturePublisherAmerican Publishing CompanyPublication date1876 1 OCLC47052486Dewey Decimal813 4LC ClassPZ7 T88 Ad 2001Followed byAdventures of Huckleberry Finn TextThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Wikisource Contents 1 Plot 2 Significance 3 Inception 4 Publication 5 Criticism 6 Sequels and other works featuring Tom Sawyer 7 Adaptations and influences 7 1 Film and television 7 2 Music 7 3 Theatrical 7 4 Ballet 7 5 Comic books 7 6 Video games 7 7 Internet 7 8 Theme park attractions 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External linksPlot edit nbsp Tom Sawyer 1972 US commemorative stamp showing the whitewashed fence nbsp Tom and Becky lost in the caves Illustration from the 1876 edition by artist True Williams Tom Sawyer is an orphan who lives with his Aunt Polly and his half brother Sid in the town of St Petersburg Missouri sometime in the 1840s A fun loving boy he frequently skips school to play or go swimming When Aunt Polly catches him sneaking home late on a Friday evening and discovers that he has been in a fight she makes him whitewash her fence the next day as punishment Tom cleverly persuades several neighborhood children to trade him small trinkets and treasures for the privilege of doing his tedious work using reverse psychology to convince them of its enjoyable nature Later Tom trades the trinkets with students in his Sunday school class for tickets given out for memorizing verses of Scripture He collects enough tickets to earn a prized Bible from the teacher despite being one of the worst students in the class and knowing almost nothing of Scripture eliciting envy from the students and a mixture of pride and shock from the adults Tom falls in love with a girl named Becky Thatcher who is new in town and the daughter of a prominent judge Tom wins the admiration of Judge Thatcher in the church by obtaining the Bible as a prize but reveals his ignorance when he is unable to answer basic questions about Scripture Tom pursues Becky eventually persuading her to get engaged by kissing her Their romance soon collapses when she discovers that Tom was engaged to another schoolgirl Amy Lawrence Shortly after Becky spurns Tom he accompanies Huckleberry Finn a vagrant boy whom all the other boys admire to a graveyard at midnight to perform a superstitious ritual intended to heal warts At the graveyard they witness a trio of body snatchers Dr Robinson Muff Potter and Injun Joe robbing a grave A fight breaks out during which Robinson knocks Potter unconscious and is then murdered by Injun Joe When Potter wakes up Injun Joe puts the weapon in his hand and tells him that he killed Robinson while drunk Tom and Huck swear a blood oath not to tell anyone about the murder fearing that Injun Joe will find out and kill them for revenge Potter is arrested and jailed to await trial not disputing Injun Joe s claim Tom grows bored with school and he his friend classmate Joe Harper and Huck run away to Jackson s Island in the Mississippi River to begin life as pirates While enjoying their freedom they become aware that the community is scouring the river for their bodies as the boys are missing and presumed dead Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion and after a brief moment of remorse at his loved ones suffering conceives a plan to appear at his own funeral The trio later carries out this scheme making a sensational and sudden appearance at church in the middle of their joint funeral service winning the immense respect of their classmates for the stunt Back in school Becky rips a page in the school master s anatomy book after Tom startles her but Tom regains her admiration by claiming responsibility for the damage and accepting the punishment that would have been hers During Potter s murder trial Tom breaks his oath with Huck and testifies for the defense identifying Injun Joe as the actual culprit Injun Joe flees the courtroom before he can be apprehended Potter is acquitted but Tom and Huck now live in constant fear for their lives Once school lets out for the summer Tom and Huck decide to hunt for buried treasure in the area While investigating an abandoned house they are interrupted by the arrival of two men one of them is a Spaniard supposedly deaf mute whom the boys recognize as Injun Joe in disguise He and his partner plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own in the house but inadvertently discover a large hoard of gold coins while doing so They decide to move it to a new hiding place which Tom and Huck are determined to find One night Huck follows the men and overhears them planning to break into the home of the wealthy Widow Douglas so Injun Joe can mutilate her face in revenge for being publicly whipped for vagrancy a punishment handed down by her late husband a justice of the peace Huck summons help and thus prevents the break in but asks that his name not be made public for fear of retaliation by Injun Joe Shortly before Huck stops the crime Tom goes on a picnic to a local cave with Becky and their classmates Tom and Becky become lost and wander in the cave for several days facing starvation and dehydration Becky becomes extremely dehydrated and weak and Tom s search for a way out grows more desperate He encounters Injun Joe by chance but is not seen He eventually finds an exit and he and Becky are joyfully welcomed back to town learning that they have been missing for three days and traveled five miles from the entrance Judge Thatcher has the cave s entrance door reinforced and locked When Tom hears of this action two weeks later he is horror stricken knowing that Injun Joe is still inside He directs a posse to the cave where they find Injun Joe dead of starvation just inside the entrance A week later having deduced from Injun Joe s presence that the stolen gold must be hidden in the cave Tom takes Huck there in search of it They find the gold which totals over 12 000 equivalent to 377 000 in 2022 and is invested on their behalf The Widow Douglas adopts Huck but he finds the restrictions of a civilized home life painful attempting to escape back to his vagrant life He reluctantly returns to the widow persuaded by Tom s offer to form a high class robber gang Significance editThe novel has elements of humor satire and social criticism features that later made Mark Twain one of the most important authors of American literature Mark Twain describes some autobiographical events in the book The novel s setting of St Petersburg is based on Twain s actual boyhood home of Hannibal near St Louis and many of the places in it are real and today support a tourist industry as a result 6 The concept of boyhood is developed through Tom s actions including his runaway adventure with Joe and Huckleberry To help show how mischievous and messy boyhood was The Miriam and Ira D Wallach Division of Art Prints and Photographs shows a picture of a young boy smoking a pipe sawing furniture climbing all over the place and sleeping In Twain s novel Tom and his friend are young when they decide they want to learn how to smoke a pipe Tom and Joe do this to show just how cool they are to the other boys 7 Inception editTom Sawyer is Twain s first attempt to write a novel on his own He had previously written contemporary autobiographical narratives The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims Progress Roughing It and two short texts called sketches which parody the youth literature of the time These are The Story of the Good Boy and The Story of the Wicked Little Boy which are satirical texts of a few pages In the first a model child is never rewarded and ends up dying before he can declaim his last words which he has carefully prepared In the second story an evil little boy steals and lies like Tom Sawyer but finishes rich and successful Tom appears as a mixture of these little boys since he is at the same time a scamp and a boy endowed with a certain generosity By the time he wrote Tom Sawyer Twain was already a successful author based on the popularity of The Innocents Abroad He owned a large house in Hartford Connecticut but needed another success to support himself with a wife and two daughters He had collaborated on a novel with Charles Dudley Warner The Gilded Age published in 1874 8 He had earlier written an unpublished memoir of his own life on the Mississippi and had corresponded with a boyhood friend Will Bowen both of which had evoked many memories and were used as source material Twain named his fictional character after a San Francisco fireman whom he met in June 1863 The real Tom Sawyer was a local hero famous for rescuing 90 passengers after a shipwreck The two remained friendly during Twain s three year stay in San Francisco often drinking and gambling together 9 Publication edit nbsp Frontispiece and title page of the first American editionIn November 1875 Twain gave the manuscript to Elisha Bliss of the American Publishing Company who sent it to True Williams for the illustrations A little later Twain had the text also quickly published at Chatto and Windus of London in June 1876 but without illustration Pirate editions appeared very quickly in Canada and Germany The American Publishing Company finally published its edition in December 1876 which was the first illustrated edition of Tom Sawyer 10 These two editions differ slightly After completing his manuscript Twain had a copy made of it It is this copy which was read and annotated by his friend William Dean Howells Howells and Twain corresponded through fairly informal handwritten letters discussing many aspects of his works and manuscripts language choices character development as well as racial development and depiction Twain then made his own corrections based on Howells comments which he later incorporated in the original manuscript but some corrections escaped him The English edition was based on this corrected copy while the illustrated American edition was based on the original manuscript To further complicate matters Twain was personally concerned with the revision of the proofs of the American edition which he did not do for the English edition The American edition is therefore considered the authoritative edition Criticism editA third person narrator describes the experiences of the boys interspersed with occasional social commentary In its sequel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain changes to a first person narrative which takes moral conflicts more personally and thus makes greater social criticism possible 11 The two other subsequent books Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective are similarly in the first person narrative from the perspective of Huckleberry Finn The book has raised controversy for its use of the racial epithet nigger a bowdlerized version aroused indignation among some literary critics 12 The book has been criticized for its caricature like portrayal of Native Americans through the character Injun Joe He is depicted as malevolent for the sake of malevolence is not allowed to redeem himself in any way by Twain dies a pitiful and despairing death in a cave and upon his death is treated as a tourist attraction Revard suggests that the adults in the novel blame the character s Indian blood as the cause of his evil 13 Sequels and other works featuring Tom Sawyer editAdventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 Tom Sawyer Abroad 1894 Tom Sawyer Detective 1896 Tom Sawyer the story s title character also appears in two other uncompleted sequels Huck and Tom Among the Indians and Tom Sawyer s Conspiracy He is also a character in Twain s unfinished Schoolhouse Hill Adaptations and influences editFilm and television edit Tom Sawyer 1917 directed by William Desmond Taylor starring Jack Pickford as Tom 14 Tom Sawyer 1930 directed by John Cromwell starring Jackie Coogan as Tom 15 Tom Sawyer 1936 Soviet Union version directed by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky 16 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1938 Technicolor film by the Selznick Studio starring Tommy Kelly as Tom and directed by Norman Taurog notable is the cave sequence designed by William Cameron Menzies 17 Tom Sawyer 1956 a musical episode of the U S Steel Hour written by Frank Luther and starring John Sharpe as Tom and Jimmy Boyd as Huck The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1960 BBC television series in 7 episodes starring Fred Smith as Tom and Janina Faye as Becky The series theme song was John Gilbert is the Boat sung by Peggy Seeger 18 Les aventures de Tom Sawyer 1968 Romanian French West German television miniseries directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner starring Roland Demongeot as Tom and Marc Di Napoli as Huck 19 Aventurile lui Tom Sawyer 1968 Romanian movie directed by Mircea Albulescu The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1968 a half hour live action animated series produced by Hanna Barbera Productions 20 Las Aventuras de Juliancito 1969 Mexican film 21 Tom Sawyer 1973 musical adaptation by Robert B Sherman and Richard M Sherman with Johnny Whitaker in the title role Jeff East as Huck Finn Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher and Celeste Holm as Aunt Polly 22 Mark Twain s Tom Sawyer 1973 TV movie version sponsored by Dr Pepper starring Buddy Ebsen as Muff Potter and filmed in Upper Canada Village 23 Pani kluci 1976 Czech movie directed by Vera Plivova Simkova Huckleberry Finn and His Friends 1979 TV series 24 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1980 Japanese anime television series by Nippon Animation part of the World Masterpiece Theater aired in the United States on HBO The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn ru Priklyucheniya Toma Sojera i Geklberri Finna 1981 Soviet Union 3 episodes version directed by Stanislav Govorukhin 25 Rascals and Robbers The Secret Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn 1982 a made for TV movie starring Patrick Creadon as Tom and Anthony Michael Hall as Huck Sawyer and Finn 1983 American television series pilot in which Tom Sawyer Peter Horton and Huck Finn Michael Dudikoff reunite by chance 10 years after the original story and seek new adventures in the Old West Tom Sawyer 1984 Canadian claymation version produced by Hal Roach studios citation needed Wishbone 1995 the first episode A Tail in Twain had the title character imagining himself as the title character with the character of Injun Joe being referred to as Crazy Joe Tom and Huck 1995 starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck Finn 26 The Animated Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1998 Canadian version written by Bob Merrill and directed by William R Kowalchuk Jr Uses the voices of Ryan Slater Christopher Lloyd and Kirsten Dunst 27 Tom Sawyer 2000 animated adaptation featuring the characters as anthropomorphic animals instead of humans with an all star voice cast including country singers Rhett Akins Mark Wills Lee Ann Womack Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr as well as Betty White 28 Thomas Sawyer as a young adult is a character in the movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen portrayed by Shane West Here Tom is a U S Secret Service agent who joins the team s fight against Professor Moriarty Tom Sawyer de 2011 German version directed by Hermine Huntgeburth Tom Sawyer amp Huckleberry Finn 2014 starring Joel Courtney as Tom and Jake T Austin as Huck Band of Robbers a 2015 American crime comedy film written and directed by the Nee Brothers 29 Music edit Tom Sawyer is a song by Canadian rock band Rush originally released on their 1981 album Moving Pictures as its opener Theatrical edit From 1932 to 1933 German philosopher Theodor Adorno adapted The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a ballad opera titled Der Schatz des Indianer Joe Treasure of Joe the Indian He never finished the musical accompaniment The libretto was published by his wife Gretel Adorno and student Rolf Tiedemann in 1979 30 In 1956 We re From Missouri a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with book music and lyrics by Tom Boyd was presented by the students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama In 1960 Tom Boyd s musical version re titled Tom Sawyer was presented professionally at Theatre Royal Stratford East in London England and in 1961 toured provincial theatres in England 31 32 In 1981 the play The Boys in Autumn by the American dramatist Bernhard Sabath premiered in San Francisco In the play Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meet again as old men Despite good reviews the play has remained largely unknown 33 In the 1985 musical Big River by William Hauptman and Roger Miller Tom is a secondary character played by John Short from 1985 to 1987 In 2001 the musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Ken Ludwig and Don Schlitz debuted on Broadway 34 In 2015 the Mark Twain House and Museum selected 17 year old Noah Altshuler writer of Making the Move as Mark Twain Playwright in Residence to create a modern meta fictional adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for regional and commercial production 35 Ballet edit Tom Sawyer A Ballet in Three Acts premiered on October 14 2011 at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City Missouri The score was by composer Maury Yeston with choreography by William Whitener artistic director of the Kansas City Ballet 36 37 A review in The New York Times observed It s quite likely that this is the first all new entirely American three act ballet it is based on an American literary classic has an original score by an American composer and was given its premiere by an American choreographer and company Both the score and the choreography are energetic robust warm deliberately naive both ornery and innocent in ways right for Twain 38 Comic books edit The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been adapted into comic book form many times Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn Stoll amp Edwards Co 1925 collection of the comic strip of the same name by Clare Victor Dwiggins syndicated by the McClure Syndicate beginning in 1918 Classics Illustrated 50 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Gilberton August 1948 adapted by Harry G Miller and Aldo Rubano reprinted extensively Dell Junior Treasury 10 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Dell Comics October 1957 adapted by Frank Thorne Joyas Literarias Juveniles 60 Tom Sawyer detective Editorial Bruguera 1972 adapted by Miguel Cusso and Edmond Fernandez Ripoll Tom Sawyer Pendulum Illustrated Classics Pendulum Press 1973 adapted by Irwin Shapiro and E R Cruz 39 reprinted in Marvel Classics Comics 7 1976 and a number of other places Joyas Literarias Juveniles 182 Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer Editorial Bruguera 1977 adapted by Juan Manuel Gonzalez Cremona and Xirinius as Jaime Juez Classics Illustrated 9 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer First Comics May 1990 adapted by Mike Ploog reprinted in Classics Illustrated 19 NBM 2014 Tom Sawyer An All Action Classic 2 Sterling Publishing 2008 adapted by Rad Sechrist Classics Illustrated Deluxe 4 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Papercutz 2009 adapted by Jean David Morvan Frederique Voulyze and Severine Le Fevebvre The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Capstone Publishers 2007 adapted by Daniel Strickland Manga Classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer UDON Entertainment Manga Classics April 2018 40 adapted by Crystal Silvermoon and Kuma ChanVideo games edit The Adventures of Tom Sawyer an action platformer for the Nintendo Entertainment System It was released by SeTa in February 1989 in Japan and August that same year in North America Square s Tom Sawyer a role playing video game produced by Square It was released in March 1989 for Japan on the Famicom Internet edit On November 30 2011 to celebrate Twain s 176th birthday the Google Doodle was a scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 41 Theme park attractions edit An opening day attraction at Six Flags Over Mid America Now Six Flags St Louis was Injun Joe s Cave which told the story of Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher as they escaped from Injun Joe after his murdering of Dr Robinson The attraction was open until 1978 when it was replaced with The Time Tunnel To this day the building that housed this former attraction is home to Justice League Battle for Metropolis See also edit nbsp Children s literature portalAdventures of Huckleberry Finn List of Tom Sawyer characters Mark Twain bibliography National Tom Sawyer Days The Story of a Bad BoyReferences edit Facsimile of the original 1st edition American Literature Mark Twain www americanliterature com Retrieved 29 January 2015 Railton Stephen The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain in His Times University of Virginia Retrieved 2 April 2018 Messent Peter 2007 The Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781139462273 Retrieved 2 April 2018 United States History Mark Twain Retrieved 28 February 2019 Norkunas Martha K 1993 The Politics of Public Memory Tourism History and Ethnicity in Monterey California SUNY Press p 60 ISBN 978 0791414842 Leedle Yawcob Strauss THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS L Prang amp Co Retrieved 15 May 2019 Gailey Amanda June 2013 The Gilded Age A Tale of Today Encyclopedia of American Literature ISBN 9781438140773 Graysmith Robert October 2012 The Adventures of the Real Tom Sawyer Smithsonian Magazine Archived from the original on November 7 2013 Retrieved November 15 2012 Twain Mark 1967 Hill Hamlin Lewis ed Mark Twain s Letters to his Publishers 1867 1894 Berkeley California University of California Press ISBN 9780520005600 tom sawyer chatto and windus 1876 Gross Langenhoff Barbara 2006 Social Criticism in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn GRIN Verlag ISBN 978 3638456821 Opinion That s Not Twain The New York Times 2011 ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 2017 09 18 Revard Carter 1999 Why Mark Twain Murdered Injun Joe And Will Never Be Indicted The Massachusetts Review 40 4 643 670 JSTOR 25091596 Tom Sawyer Archived from the original on 2012 02 07 Tom Sawyer 1930 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Tom Sawyer 1936 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER 1938 tcm com Retrieved November 14 2012 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1960 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Les aventur Sawyer 1968 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1968 1969 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Aventuras de Juliancito 1969 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Tom Sawyer 1973 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Tom Sawyer TV 1973 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Huckleberry Finn and His Friends 1979 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Mark Deming 2009 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn 1981 Movies amp TV Dept The New York Times Archived from the original on December 29 2009 Retrieved November 14 2012 Tom and Huck 1995 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 The Animated Adventures of Tom Sawyer Behind The Voice Actors Retrieved 8 May 2019 Tom Sawyer Video 2000 IMDB Retrieved November 14 2012 Tom Sawyer amp Huckleberry Finn 2014 IMDB Retrieved February 27 2015 Adorno Theodor 1979 Tiedemann Rolf ed Schatz des Indianer Joe in German Frankfurt am Main Suhrkamp Verlag TOM SAWYER London production www tomboyd net Retrieved 2016 08 13 Frankos Laura 2010 01 01 The Broadway Musical Quiz Book Hal Leonard Corporation p 267 ISBN 9781423492757 Rich Frank 1986 05 01 THEATER THE BOYS IN AUTUMN The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 2017 10 02 Weber Bruce 2001 04 27 THEATER REVIEW An Older and Calmer Tom Sawyer The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 2017 10 02 Giola Michael March 24 2015 Could a 17 Year Old Bring Mark Twain s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Back to Broadway Playbill Horsley Paul An American Ballet KCB Presents World Premiere Of Ambitious New Piece Archived 2013 01 27 at archive today KCIndependent com accessed June 23 2012 Jones Kenneth Maury Yeston s Tom Sawyer Ballet Will Get World Premiere in 2011 Archived 2010 11 12 at the Wayback Machine Playbill com November 9 2012 Macaulay Alastair Yes Those Are Tom Becky and Huck Leaping NYTimes com October 24 2011 Inge M Thomas Comics The Mark Twain Encyclopedia Ed J R LeMaster and James D Wilson New York Garland 1993 pp 168 71 Manga Classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 2018 UDON Entertainment ISBN 978 1947808027 Mark Twain s 176th Birthday google com November 30 2011Further reading editBeaver Harold et al eds The role of structure in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn Vol 1 No 8 Johns Hopkins Textual Studies 1987 pp 1 57 Beringer Alex Humbug History The Politics of Puffery in Tom Sawyer s Conspiracy Mark Twain Annual 14 1 2016 114 126 Online Blair Walter On the Structure of Tom Sawyer Modern Philology 37 1 1939 75 88 Bonilla Joe Montenegro The American Past and Present A New Historicist Approach to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Letras 2 64 2018 109 129 onlineBuchen Callista Writing the Imperial Question at Home Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians Revisited Mark Twain Annual 9 2011 111 129 online Caron James E The Arc of Mark Twain s Satire or Tom Sawyer the Moral Snag American Literary Realism 51 1 2018 36 58 Online dead link Dadjo Servais Dieu Donne Yedia Analysing Linguistic Stylistic Devices in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and So Long a Letter A Comparative Appraisal International Journal of English Linguistics 12 2 2022 onlineDillingham William B Setting and Theme in Tom Sawyer Mark Twain Journal 12 2 1964 6 8 online Girsang Martina et al Exploring the Language Usage in Mark Twain s Novel Adventures of Tom Sawyer Hegemonic Masculinity Analysis REiLA Journal of Research and Innovation in Language 4 2 2022 197 208 onlineGribben Alan Tom Sawyer Tom Canty and Huckleberry Finn The Boy Book and Mark Twain Mark Twain Journal 55 1 2 2017 127 144 online Hill Hamlin L The Composition and the Structure of Tom Sawyer American Literature 32 4 1961 379 392 online Kenny Neil of Literature on Beliefs The Example of Injun Joe in Twain s Adventures of Tom Sawyer in Reading Beyond the Code Literature and Relevance Theory 2018 73 online Roberts James L CliffsNotes Twain s The adventures of Tom Sawyer 2001 online free to borrow Simpson Claude Mitchell ed Twentieth century interpretations of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a collection of critical essays Prentice Hall 1968 Tibbetts John C And James M Welsh eds The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film 2005 pp 3 5 Towers Tom H I Never Thought We Might Want to Come Back Strategies of Transcendence in Tom Sawyer Modern Fiction Studies 21 4 1975 509 520 online West Mark I Playing Pirates with Tom Sawyer The Intersection of Reader Response Theory and Play Theory The Looking Glass New Perspectives on Children s Literature 20 1 2017 onlineExternal links edit nbsp Wikisource has original text related to this article The Adventures of Tom Sawyer nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Standard Ebooks The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Project Gutenberg nbsp The Adventures of Tom Sawyer public domain audiobook at LibriVox The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The digitized copy of the first American edition from Internet Archive 1876 First edition illustrations by True Williams Archived 2017 07 20 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Adventures of Tom Sawyer amp oldid 1181758027, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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