The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (also simply known as Tom Sawyer) is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy, Tom Sawyer, 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, 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 is alleged by Mark Twain to be one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.[6]
Orphan Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, sometime in the 1840s. He frequently skips school to play or go swimming. When 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 persuades several neighborhood children to trade him small trinkets and treasures for the "privilege" of doing his 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 Becky Thatcher, a girl who is new in town. Tom wins the admiration of her father, the prominent Judge Thatcher, in the church by obtaining the Bible as a prize, but reveals his ignorance when he cannot 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.
Becky spurns Tom, who accompanies Huckleberry Finn, a vagrant boy whom all the other boys admire, to a graveyard at midnight to perform a ritual intended to heal warts. At the graveyard, they witness three 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 notice 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 moment of remorse at his loved ones' suffering, conceives a plan to attend his own funeral. The three carry out this scheme, appearing at church in the middle of their joint funeral service and winning the 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 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, who is actually Injun Joe in disguise. He and his partner plan to bury some stolen treasure in the house, but inadvertently discover a 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, who plan 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 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 days, facing starvation and dehydration. Becky becomes 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 $392,000 in 2023) and is invested on their behalf. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, who 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
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.[7]
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.[8]
Inception
Tom Sawyer was Twain's first attempt to write a novel. 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.[9]
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.[10]
Publication
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.[11]
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
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.[12] 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.[13]
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.[14]
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.
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[19]
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[20]
Aventurile lui Tom Sawyer (1968), Romanian movie directed by Mircea Albulescu.
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.
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 Sawyer" is a song by Canadian rock band Rush, originally released on their 1981 album Moving Pictures as its opener.
Theatrical
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.[31]
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 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.[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.[36]
Ballet
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.[37][38] 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."[39]
Comic books
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been adapted into comic book form many times:
Joyas Literarias Juveniles #182: "Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer" (Editorial Bruguera, 1977) – adapted by Juan Manuel González 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)[41] – adapted by Crystal Silvermoon and Kuma Chan
On November 30, 2011, to celebrate Twain's 176th birthday, the Google Doodle was a scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.[42]
Theme park attractions
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.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.
Tom and Huck is a 1995 American adventure comedy-drama film based on Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Brad Renfro, Mike McShane, Eric Schweig, and Amy Wright. The film was directed by Peter Hewitt and produced/co-written by Stephen Sommers. The movie was released in North America on December 22, 1995.
Tom Sawyer is the 1973 American musical film adaptation of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and was directed by Don Taylor. The film was produced by Reader's Digest in collaboration with Arthur P. Jacobs, and its screenplay and songs were written by both Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman.
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum is located on 206-208 Hill Street, Hannibal, Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the United States. It was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as author Mark Twain, from 1844 to 1853. Clemens found the inspiration for many of his stories, including the white picket fence, while living here. It has been open to the public as a museum since 1912, and was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 29, 1962. It is located in the Mark Twain Historic District.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a musical comedy based on the 1876 novel by Mark Twain conceived and written by Ken Ludwig, with music and lyrics by Don Schlitz. The musical is the story of a fourteen-year-old boy growing up in the heartland of America. This Broadway musical version of Mark Twain's novel is set in 1840 in St. Petersburg, Missouri, a bustling town on the banks of the Mississippi River. In the course of the story, Tom matches wits with his stern Aunt Polly, falls in love with the beautiful, feisty Becky Thatcher, and goes on the adventure of his life with Becky and Huckleberry Finn. Along the way he meets a terrifying villain named Injun Joe, Tom's bratty half-brother Sid, and all the other boys and girls in the village.
The Adventures of Mark Twain, also known as Comet Quest in the United Kingdom, is a 1985 American independent stop-motion claymation fantasy film directed by Will Vinton and starring James Whitmore. It received a limited theatrical release in May 1985 and was released on DVD in January 2006 and again as a collector's edition in 2012 on DVD and Blu-ray.
Tom Sawyer is a 1917 American silent comedy-drama/adventure film starring Jack Pickford, Robert Gordon, and Clara Horton; it is based on Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Directed by William Desmond Taylor, the film was released by Paramount Pictures.
The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an American live-action and animated fantasy television series that originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1968, through February 23, 1969. Produced by Hanna-Barbera and based on the classic Mark Twain characters, the program starred its three live-action heroes, Huck Finn, Becky Thatcher, and Tom Sawyer, navigating weekly adventures within an animated world as they attempted to outrun a vengeful "Injun Joe". After the show's original run, the series continued to air in reruns as part of The Banana Splits and Friends Show syndication package.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a 1938 American drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Norman Taurog who had previously directed Huckleberry Finn (1931) with Jackie Coogan and Junior Durkin. The film starred Tommy Kelly in the title role, with Jackie Moran and Ann Gillis. The screenplay by John V. A. Weaver was based on the classic 1876 novel of the same name by Mark Twain. The movie was the first film version of the novel to be made in color.
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). He is 12 to 13 years old during the former and a year older at the time of the latter. Huck also narrates Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, two shorter sequels to the first two books.
Tom Sawyer is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy-drama film directed by John Cromwell and starring Jackie Coogan. The screenplay by Grover Jones, William Slavens McNutt, and Sam Mintz is based on the 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Alan Gribben is a professor emeritus of English at Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama and a Mark Twain scholar. He was distinguished research professor from 1998 to 2001 and the Dr. Guinevera A. Nance Alumni Professor from 2006 to 2009. He engendered widespread controversy in 2011 when he announced the publication of expurgated versions of Twain's works.
Huckleberry Finn is a 1931 American pre-Code adventure comedy film directed by Norman Taurog, and written by Grover Jones and William Slavens McNutt, based on Mark Twain's 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It stars Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer, Mitzi Green as Becky Thatcher, Junior Durkin as Huckleberry Finn, and Jackie Searl as Sid Sawyer.
Huck and Tom is a surviving American comedy-drama film directed by William Desmond Taylor and released in 1918. The scenario by Julia Crawford Ivers is derived from Mark Twain's novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Robert Gordon and Jack Pickford reprise the title roles from the 1917 version of Tom Sawyer, a successful adaptation that was also directed by Taylor.
Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn is a 2014 American comedy-drama/adventure film directed by Jo Kastner and starring Joel Courtney as Tom Sawyer, Jake T. Austin as Huckleberry Finn, Katherine McNamara as Becky Thatcher, Noah Munck as Ben Rogers, and with Val Kilmer as Mark Twain. It is based on Mark Twain's novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The film was released by VMI Worldwide.
Tom Sawyer is a 3-LP box set containing a reading by Bing Crosby of an abridged version of Mark Twain’s classic story The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It was recorded for Argo Records (UK) on September 3 and 5, 1975 at Argo Studios, 115 Fulham Road, London.
Band of Robbers is a 2015 American independent crime comedy film written and directed by brothers Aaron and Adam Nee, based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this modern-day retelling, the two iconic rascals are grown up and small-time crooks still searching for the fabled Murrell's treasure that has eluded them since childhood. The story draws heavily from Twain's classic novels, including characters, plot twists and even dialogue.
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is a 1955 CBS TV film adaptation of Mark Twain's 1884 novel of the same name, starring Charles Taylor in the title role. It was directed by Herbert B. Swope Jr. It aired on September 1, 1955 as the Season 2 premiere of the anthology program Climax!.
Tom Sawyer was a one-hour musical by Frank Luther, originally created for the television series The U.S. Steel Hour. It was broadcast live on CBS November 21, 1956, and marked the first time the anthology series had presented a musical. Luther said the show evolved from his re-reading of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a few years earlier: "(W)henever an incident or character gave me an idea for a song, I'd write the music and words," Luther told an interviewer in 1957. "By the time I'd reached the end of the book, I found I had written 32 songs. The cast included John Sharpe as Tom Sawyer, Jimmy Boyd as Huckleberry Finn, Bennye Gatteys as Becky Thatcher, Rose Bampton as Aunt Polly, Matt Mattox as Injun Joe and Clarence Cooper as Jim the Narrator. A cast album was released on Decca Records shortly after the broadcast, featuring several songs omitted from the original show. The show's sets and backgrounds were designed by Thomas Hart Benton. At the time of the broadcast, Sharpe was performing in the Broadway cast of The Most Happy Fella. Luther was commissioned to follow up the show with a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, also starring Boyd, which was broadcast on The U.S. Steel Hour November 22, 1957. There does not appear to be any existing film or kinescope of either broadcast. There is a recording of the original broadcast audio in the New York Public Library's Toscanini Legacy Collection of Sound Recordings.
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Roberts, James L. CliffsNotes Twain's The adventures of Tom Sawyer (2001) online free to borrow
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